Investigation and proposal of future Mars landing sites

1
Investigation and proposal of future Mars landing
sites

• Investigate sites of new scientific interest
  revealed in data from the HRSC camera, other Mars
  Express instruments, and current NASA missions
  for potential future landings
• Consider suitability and variety of targets at
  the sites in relation to expected science
  instrument package
• Evaluate sites in relation to expected lander
  engineering constraints
• landing ellipse, solar power, atmospheric
  braking, surface winds, slopes, rock abundance,
  hazards

2
Study the landing site of the Spirit Mars
Exploration Rover in Gusev crater

• HRSC has made 3 imaging passes over Gusev, in
  orbits 24, 72, and 283, providing north-south
  swaths of order 50 km in width
• We expect to produce digital elevation models of
  up to 50m horizontal resolution for investigation
  in combination with the colour mosaics. Our
  interest will be focused on the possible ancient
  presence of water in the crater, and also on the
  origin and geological history of the 'Columbia
  Hills' now under close study by the Spirit rover

3
Fluidised impact ejecta

• use HRSC DTMs to study fluidised ejecta flows at
  small scales
• evaluate volumes, slopes, thicknesses, collapse
  and alteration
• relate to local surface processes

SAI 5235 d28 km 49.35N 241.08W MOLA data
4
Crater counting from DTMs

• apply Hough transform technique for automatic
  crater recognition to HRSC DTMs
• assess usefulness in crater counting for surface
  age measurements

Viking
MOLA
Hough transform