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/

[djellison]

I've tidied this thread up a little - MIP, please be more careful before jumping to a conclusion so contrary to the collective wisdom, and then stating quite so forcefully.

The killer point is that if stereo imagery describes the feature as a depression, then the label is irrelevant - illumination is from the lower right. As another post ( which made no sense during clear up, so was culled ) - you must be carefull assuming that MRO is heading south, and the East is to the right. This could be an ascending observation where the geometry would be inverted.

Doug

[climber]

The killer point is that if stereo imagery describes the feature as a depression,
Doug

Is there any possibility that this could be the crash site of MPL then?
I would go for a full MPL including heat shield etc that would have hitten the ground

[ugordan]

Tim53 said in a earlier post there's another one of those conical pits in the area suggesting this has nothing to do with MPL. If this is an impact crater, its morphology seems inconsistent with what I'd expect of a hypersonic impact into hard or rough soil. The pit itself is too large, this one is supposedly 50 meters across. I wouldn't expect a small object travelling at say 400 m/s to produce a crater that big.

If I had to put my money on it (Murphy's law!), I'd say the lander is either in the heavily clouded-over images we have now or in the rest of the ellipse that hasn't been covered yet. Other than that, anything suspicious would have probably already jumped out at the HiRISE team, at least when looking at your typical, fairly flat and dull terrain here (though I am wondering how systematic their search was so we can modify our "expectations"). On the other hand, images like PSP_005536_1030 (especially the top part of NOMAP version) have pretty big albedo variations and small-scale topography so in principle, something just might be hiding over there.