InSight landing site, Localization & views from orbiters Options

[elakdawalla]

Hi folks, I've reopened the EDL thread I'm starting a thread for discussion of landing site localization. There was a figure in today's Sounds of Mars press briefing that shows the location of the landing site, on HiRISE image ESP_036761_1845

[Phil Stooke]

I will probably regret this, but just for the sake of having something out there, this is my guess as to the location of InSight. My circular panorama needs to be rotated a bit clockwise to fit this - its orientation was only approximate anyway. And this is not a perfect solution, but it will have to do for now. Very soon we will have a HiRISE image to show the real location. The HiRISE image number is in the file name if you save it.

Phil

[elakdawalla]

I've combined the map from today's press briefing with the information in today's tweet by team member David Mimoun to locate the landing site within the ellipse. They're still not sure exactly where it is, but it's somewhere near this dot.

[elakdawalla]

Here's a full-res crop from ESP_036761_1845 that covers the same area as in Mimoun's tweet, plus the same with IRB color overlaid. The color image was missing IR data for one piece of the swath; I copied in data from the green channel to fill that gap, matching the levels.

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/i...45_RED_crop.png
https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/i...5_MRGB_crop.png

[elakdawalla]

Also, I checked and there seems to be only one other HiRISE image that covers the same area: ESP_037262_1845

This one, very close by, was taken during the dust storm

[Phil Stooke]

Another candidate location which matches the panorama better than the other one, including distant features, but has a few strikes against it as well. Neither site is perfect.

Phil

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[PDP8E]

In the immortal words of our Cartographer Phil Stooke... I'll probably regret this but...
It feels like matching features from orbit to the subtle features on this ground here is like some sort of crazy Rorschach Test... after a few hours you start believing any old theory
this is North about 1000 or so pixels from Phil's



Any word on the coming HiRISE image?

[HSchirmer]

In the immortal words of our Cartographer Phil Stooke... I'll probably regret this but...
It feels like matching features from orbit to the subtle features on this ground here is like some sort of crazy Rorschach Test... after a few hours you start believing any old theory

Hmm "three amigos" for the hills...

Does the Insight Team have any naming conventions yet for objects?

Three hills in the distance...
Westerns= Buono, Brutto, Cattivo? (Good, Bad, Ugly?)
Comedies= Steve Martin, Martin Short, Chevy Chase...

[volcanopele]

HiRISE has posted image(s) of the InSight hardware on the surface:

https://www.uahirise.org/releases/insight/hardware/

As far as where that is WRT the landing ellipse: https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA22878

[elakdawalla]

Via Livio Tornabene on Twitter:

InSight Lander:
Planetographic:4.5510° N, 224.4755° W
Planetocentric:4.499897° N, 135.616000° E
Parachute:
Planetographic:4.5424° N, 224.4707° W
Planetocentric:4.491393° N, 135.620800° E
Heat Shield:
Planetographic:4.5570° N, 224.4640° W
Planetocentric:4.505831° N, 135.627500° E

My maps are here.

[vikingmars]

Another candidate location which matches the panorama better than the other one, including distant features, but has a few strikes against it as well. Neither site is perfect.
Phil

Quite good Phil : your estimate was 300 m SSE from the real position. Congratulations

[Phil Stooke]

Not good enough! Must try harder.

Here is a pre-landing image, clearer than the new image, showing the location of the lander. I registered the post-landing image with this to be sure the location is exact. This image is map-projected (north at the top). The press release image is in its non-map-projected format, slightly rotated clockwise from this. The image number is in the file name if you save it.

Phil

[elakdawalla]

New official locations, based on a map-projected version of the HiRISE image, courtesy of Livio:

Lander
ocentric:135.6180° E, 4.4988° N
ographic:135.6180° E, 4.5520° N
Parachute
ocentric:135.6227° E, 4.4903° N
ographic:135.6227° E, 4.5434° N
Backshell
ocentric:135.6224° E, 4.4905° N
ographic:135.6224° E, 4.5436° N
Heat Shield
ocentric:135.6295° E, 4.5047° N
ographic:135.6295° E, 4.5580° N

[wildespace]

A gif of before and after the landing I just made, using https://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_037262_1845



Now let's try to spot the landscape features visible in InSight's images.

[Edit] Here are some of the large-ish boulders I think I identified in sol14 panorama (using Phil Stooke's image for inlay):



The boulder on the right end of the panorama is also identifiable (south of the lander)

[nogal]

Here is, ready for Google Mars, an orbital map of the InSight landing area. It is a rectangle of roughly 2.82x2.56 km cropped from HiRISE image ESP_036761_1845, specifically from the Merged RGB (MRGB) product.

I registered it using the coordinates tweeted by Livio Tornabene, thank you Livio! The MRGB image has a resolution of 0.5m and Livio's coordinates' accuracy is about 6m, meaning there is room for relocation...

Since the map is 34MB big I can't post it here. Instead I placed it in Google Drive, here is the link: InSight_Orbital_Map_ESP_036761_1845.kmz

I also added the three hardware cutouts from ESP_058005_1845 to InSight EDL kml file. So if you dowload the above file and install it, then download and install this file
 InSight_EDL_Sim.kmz ( 1.3MB ) Number of downloads: 1234

you will be able to see the hardware superimposed on the orbital map, like this:



You will notice some misadjustments between the HW cutouts and the base map, despite having spent several hours doing location adjustments. I think this is because, as Phil pointed out, the cutouts are not map projected. So, once the full ESP_058005_1845 image is available I may revisit this. Enjoy

Fernando