Future Venus Missions |
Future Venus Missions |
Jul 1 2005, 01:30 AM
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10256 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
Oh well, might as well start that new topic since it's already well advanced in the Juno area...
My perspective on landers is as follows. All the landers we've had so far were dropped blind onto an essentially unknown surface. Any future landers can be targeted for specific terrains. It really is not true that we have had representative landings. Even a descent image or two, a panoramic photo plus a bit of surface composition, from a simple Venera-class lander just updated a bit, would be useful if we could put several down at well chosen targets. My choices would be: Examples of the main plains units (smooth, fractured, ridged) tesserae high elevation radar-bright tesserae large fresh lava flow unit ('fluctus') crater dark parabola crater ejecta outflow unit dunes area. And I have always assumed, rightly or wrongly, that it would be relatively easy to put these down, so they ought to be fairly inexpensive as planetary landers go. 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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Dec 17 2005, 01:39 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
One reason Martian craters are hard to see from Earth-based telescopes is that, as with most cratered bodies, they aren't very obvious except near the terminator. And we very, very rarely see much in the way of a terminator on Mars. Most of the Mars views from Earth are nearly full-disk, the terminator fuzzed by being viewed through the maximum amount of Mars atmosphere it's possible to have between us and the Martian surface, and by foreshortening.
The human eye has far better naked-eye resolution of the Moon than we had of Mars through telescopes for hundreds of years, and even so, lunar craters weren't really identified as such until people started looking at the Moon through telescopes. And we get very good terminator views of the Moon from Earth. So, even if we were able to see Mars with a terminator crossing mid-disk through cratered terrain, it wouldn't be surprising if we missed craters... -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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