HiRISE and Mars Polar Lander Options

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

Looking at the images of the Spirit/Opportunity landing site, it seems many of the features such as tracks and rocket blast markings have faded considerably often to the point of being invisible in the nearly three years since landing.

This had me thinking about the MGS images taken in the hope of finding MPL. Initially it was reported that MGS had spotted the lander, one image had a white spot/streak interpreted as the parachute and a dark patch with a spot in the centre not too far off, taken to be the blast zone of the rockets with the lander in the centre.

However another image taken 5 years later seemed to discount this theory - the features had faded or changed significantly. BUT, seeing how much the rover sites have changed in an even shorter time, wouldn't the same happen to the MPL site in 5 years - perhaps to an even greater degree with the more extreme seasonal changes at that location. Also, the latest HiRISE images show just how difficult it has been to spot the landers on the surface with MGS, the Viking sites in particular.

I hope HiRISE takes another look at this spot.

Mars Polar Lander NOT Found, MSSS article:
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/10/17/

[elakdawalla]

I think it's a good idea to collect links to HiRISE images that cross the MPL landing ellipse. For starters, here are the MOC pages that describe the search and show the search region:
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/12_99_...arch/index.html
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/1_24_0...nder/index.html
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/oct_20...site/index.html

These images unfortunately do not include any latitude/longitude information. However, here's a page from the MOLA team that does, suggesting that a useful box to consider is 75 to 77 south and 164 to 166 east.
http://ssed.gsfc.nasa.gov/tharsis/mpl.html

--Emily

[slinted]

...a useful box to consider is 75 to 77 south and 164 to 166 east.

So far, it looks like there are at least 3 images inside that box:

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_002846_1040 color bands available (and a little whoops in the label..."Possible Phoenix Lander Landing Site"?)
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_003690_1035 red filter
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_004336_1035 red filter, heavily clouded over