Virtual Viking, Images and animations of the Viking landing sites Options

[Phil Stooke]

In the past we've had some good Viking images here. Soon - all too soon - we will not have Phoenix any more, but despair not! Now we can re-live Viking by playing with old images. They can be searched by sol at the PDS.

As an example, I've made a composite of the very last Surface Sampler activities at either Viking site. This is work done on Viking 2 sol 957 and imaged on sol 957 and 959. (someone can animate it if they like!)

We see two separate trenching activities at the same place, and a soil dump (bottom) and a conical soil pile made by the second dump (middle). (more obvious in an animation, I just can't make one on this machine).

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

OK, back from Providence with lots of goodies.

Nprev - they didn't get close to choosing site C2 - Meridiani. They had three sites at that latitude, Capri, Meridiani and Schiaparelli (C1, C2, C3), but they never considered any but C1 seriously.

C1 was called Capri, but it was not in Capri Chasma, part of Valles Marineris. It was on the plateau north of the canyon. A similar site was considered for Mars '84, an ambitious rover mission.

Phil