Unmanned landing sites from LRO, Surveyors, Lunas, Lunakhods and impact craters from hardware impacts |
Unmanned landing sites from LRO, Surveyors, Lunas, Lunakhods and impact craters from hardware impacts |
Sep 7 2009, 07:51 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
I figured it was time to begin a thread like this, especially since some of us may still be looking for the Surveyor III retro motor casing (assuming the bright dot to the north of the landing site isn't it).
We ought to be seeing some of the other Surveyors fairly soon, I would think. We know most of their locations pretty accurately. Again, I think there is a lot to be gained, both from scientific and engineering standpoints, from detailed imaging of the Surveyor VII landing site, just to mention one. And I really want to see how visible the Lunakhod tracks are as opposed to the MET and LRV tracks. So... until we begin to see images of other unmanned hardware (or the craters caused by same), we could always discuss comparisons of Surveyor III surface imagery to the new LROC images of its landing site here. I'm especially taken by how you can resolve many of the blocks in Block Crater in the LROC image, which gives you a good feel for the explosive nature of the ejecta and roughly where in the ejecta plume a given block might have come from. Might be interesting/useful to apply this information to the samples taken at that location. -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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Nov 26 2020, 09:40 PM
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10226 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
This problem is not really suitable for the kind of algorithm being suggested here. A problem that would be suitable would be trying to match a descent image taken by Chang'e 5 with an LRO image to locate the landing area. That's two overhead views. With Luna 9 we are looking at a very low angle oblique image (the camera was about 50 cm above the surface) and a restricted area of good coverage (looking down-sun there are no visible details, looking up-sun we are only seeing an area about 2 or 3 m wide as the camera was tilted down in that direction) and everywhere the image contains bad relief distortions. My reprojected Curiosity panoramas are much more amenable to comparison with a HiRISE image because of the higher viewpoint and 360 degree coverage, but even there we are helped by knowing pretty closely where to look (and I have made bad mistakes sometimes). For Luna 9 we could be looking anywhere within a circle 30 km in diameter (maybe a bit more).
Eventually it will be found. The LRO image will show the lander, the landing stage, maybe the air bag pieces, a brightened blast zone around the landing stage site, and several craters and rocks recognizable in the panorama. When it's found it will be immediately obvious, but until then we will just have rocks and craters in some vague semblance of the expected pattern. I think Luna 13 will be easier to find because of a better view of middle distance features. Phil -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke Maps for download (free PDF: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Cartography.pdf NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain) |
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