Martian Cartography Options

[karolp]

I have recently freaked out a little bit about Martian maps of all sorts. And finally I was astonished with those highly detailed beauties that I list below. Nonetheless. some of them have huge inconsistencies (crater names) easily noticed when we compare the surroundings of Gusev crater. Enjoy:

http://www.ralphaeschliman.com/
http://planetologia.elte.hu/1cikkeke.phtml...arsmapinte.html
http://pubs.usgs.gov/imap/i2782/

[Andreas Plesch]

Wow, another document covering similar topics.

Some notes:

https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/MARS2020...z_iau2000_v4.tf

"The landing site Gaussian longitude and latitude upon which the definition is built are:

Lon = 77.429800 degrees East
Lat = 18.670633 degrees North
"

This is far from the actual landing site.


https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/MARS2020...ck/pck00010.tpc

"Mars

Old values:

Values are from the 2006 IAU report.
body499_radii = ( 3397. 3397. 3375. )

Current values:

The 2009 IAU report gives separate values for the north and
south polar radii:

north: 3373.19
south: 3379.21

The report provides the average of these values as well,
which we use as the polar radius for the triaxial model.

BODY499_RADII = ( 3396.19 3396.19 3376.20 )"

It appears earlier USGS products used this (averaged) ellipsoid but I think now use a spheroid with 3396.19km radius.

https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/MARS2020...ee/m2020_v03.tf

"Local Level Frame
-------------------------------------------------

M2020 local level frame, M2020_LOCAL_LEVEL, is defined as follows:

- +Z axis is along the downward normal at the landing site
("nadir");

- +X axis is along the local north direction ("north");

- +Y axis completes the right hand frame ("east");

- the origin of this frame is located between the rover's middle
wheels and moves with the rover.

Since this frame is essentially the M2020_TOPO frame flipped by 180
degrees about +X ("north") to point +Z down, this frame is defined
as a fixed offset frame with respect to the M2020_TOPO frame."

This is consistent with the PLACES document. So these documents seem to be developed together, and do not compete with each other (luckily).

There are cool ascii drawings of rover reference frames and mentioning of sclk which shows up as field in the geojson.

There are cool ascii drawings of camera reference frames. The MASTCAM frames includes toe in angles of -1.25 deg. and +1.25 deg. for right and left.

There are cool ascii drawings of arm axes frames.

Everything is referenced by id with value mappings somewhere else.

SCLK means SPICE spacecraft clock (SCLK) kernel.

It turns out that the PLACES document pdf for MSL lives along with the database archive, last updated in December: https://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/data/msl/MSLPLC_1XXX/

But there is no PDS archive for Mars2020 yet, it appears. There is a review. But it mentions that PLACES is not included to be picked up later.