The Planetary Society Blog
By Emily Lakdawalla
Phoenix landing site update
Jan. 25, 2007 | 16:33 EST | 21:33 UTC
I've just posted a news story giving an update on the landing site selection process for Phoenix, the next Mars lander, which will launch this August and land in May of next year. The very short version: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter saw so many big boulders in images of the landing site they thought they'd chosen that they had to pick a different location, which they have now done. Here are the new sites (thanks to Phil Stooke for sending me the base map): Phoenix landing sites under consideration as of January 2007
After a landing site working group meeting in January 2007, three sites were under consideration for the future landing site of Phoenix:
Box 1 68.35 N, 233.0 E
Box 2 66.75 N, 247.6 E
Box 3 71.20 N, 253.0 E
(Note that the longitude lines on this Viking-derived map are in west, not east, longitude. The Mars longitude convention was changed from west to east longitude in 2001.) Credit: USGS |
Here's what the boulders looked like in the old location at full HiRISE resolution:
Credit: NASA / JPL / U. Arizona |
And here's a sample of the ground nearer the new landing site:Credit: NASA / JPL / U. Arizona |
You'll notice that the new site still has boulders. Every place in the northern plains seems to have boulders -- in fact, every place on Mars does. What's different in the new site is that the boulders are smaller and there are also fewer of them. Both of those facts make the new site safer than the old one.
I thought it would be an interesting exercise to drop a model of the Phoenix lander onto this image and see whether it hit any rocks. Doug Ellison very kindly provided me some simulated views of Phoenix lander from HiRISE and plunked five of them down into some bouldery plains:Simulated views of Phoenix lander
This image simulates what the Phoenix lander might look like to the HiRISE camera aboard Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter after it lands on Mars in May 2008. Five simulated views of Phoenix at different orientations are overlaid on an image of the boulder-studded polygonal terrain of the northern plains. Credit: NASA / JPL / U. Arizona / Doug Ellison |
The situation looks pretty good! It also looks good for Phoenix's 2-meter-long-arm to reach one of the cracks between the polygons, a topic that Peter Smith mulls over in my story. Enjoy!
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