Perseverance EDL, 18 Feb 2021 Options

[Phil Stooke]

This is part of HiRISE image ESP_069231_1990 showing two impacts with characteristics I would expect of spacecraft hardware (comparing especially with the Curiosity hardware impacts). They are about 3000 m apart in that image. The two balance masses for Curiosity were only 400 m apart, but two fragments of the cruise stage also struck nearby, a few km apart. For Perseverance, one of these might be the cruise stage, and a second balance mass impact has not yet been identified, or these could both be balance mass impacts and the cruise stage site has not been identified. Curiosity impac site ejecta was dark, here it is bright, probably just due to local conditions.

Phil



PS - another 6 small masses were ejected during flight. For Curiosity their impacts were a little downrange of the landing site. HiRISE has looked for their impacts but not seen them yet as far as I can tell from a cursory look.

[Phil Stooke]

I just noted a third impact in this area:



The impact 3 - impact 2 vector is the direction of travel.


Phil

[Phil Stooke]

I have now located the impact sites of the small balance masses west of the landing site. Quick look here, something more detailed later. The top image shows dark ejecta from two impacts. The bottom image shows three sites where new objects struck the surface - it's a before-after difference image of two CTX images. The Seitah-like structure south of the impacts can be found quite easily within Jezero if you are so inclined. As I say, a better representation of this will follow. Yesterday my LPSC poster said these had not been found yet. Today I finally noticed them.

The top image is the easternmost of the three arrows in the lower image. HiRISE image ID is in the file name if you download the image.

Phil