MSL landing sites Options

[tuvas]

As there are some pictures being released from HiRISE of proposed MSL landing sites, I thought I'd give you what little I know about the process. As of the HiRISE team meeting a month ago or so, there were about 40 proposed sites to land MSL. These sites were prioritized, and are being photographed roughly in priority order. Each site requires a picture from each of the 3 main cameras (CTX, CRISM, and HiRISE) in their highest resolution in order to proceed. If it's determined that there can be a safe landing site, as well as interesting science targets, then they will advance to the next level, where I presume they will "wallpaper" the areas with HiRISE and CRISM (CTX, well, they get the whole landing ellipse in one shot, I think...). They likely will also photograph science areas near the proposed sites to look for interesting targets. After that, well, your guess is as good as mine. Note that none of this is official, but it's what I would expect. Also note that the landing site selection is still opened to new suggestions, the ones they have so far are not a complete list. The priority also doesn't mean anything right now other than they are the targets which will be photographed first, these priorities are still subject to change. But, well, I thought I'd send this out there for you all sink your teeth on, it really is quite interesting!

[elakdawalla]

Since HiROC doesn't have a handy index to landing site imagery like ASU does for Odyssey, perhaps it'd be useful to post links here to the proposed MSL site images as they get released at HiROC.

From the 28 March release:
Proposed MSL Site in Becquerel Crater PSP_001480_2015
Proposed MSL Site in Margaritifer Basin PSP_002193_1670
Proposed MSL Site in Melas Chasma PSP_002551_1700
Proposed MSL Site in Nili Fossae Crater PSP_002743_1985
Proposed MSL Site in NE Syrtis Major PSP_002809_1965
Proposed MSL Site in Elysium/Avernus Colles PSP_002832_1770
Proposed MSL site in Xanthe/Hypanis Vallis PSP_002919_1915

From the 4 April release:
Proposed MSL Site in Southwest Arabia Terra PSP_002812_1855
Proposed MSL Site in Mawrth Vallis PSP_003063_2050
Proposed MSL Site in Nili Fossae Trough PSP_003086_2015

--Emily

[tuvas]

Since HiROC doesn't have a handy index to landing site imagery like ASU does for Odyssey

Just wait, it's coming... Sometime relatively soon, meaning the next two months, there's going to be a site redesign that'll make it easier to find images, along with reprocessing of the images to improve calibration, etc. But for now, it can be useful to have such a cheat sheet.