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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Mars Express & Beagle 2 _ The first hiking maps of Mars

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Feb 12 2007, 06:12 PM

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMOI5O2UXE_0.html
European Space Agency
February 12, 2007

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Feb 12 2007, 06:25 PM

Check out Emily's latest http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000855/.

Posted by: Marz Feb 12 2007, 07:51 PM

I was definitely on Emily's wavelength! 250m contour intervals on most of the maps!

Maybe for an expert like Climber, that's a walk in the park, but even a 20m contour can hide some pretty spooky slopes, at least for 1G hikers.

Posted by: algorimancer Feb 13 2007, 02:12 PM

Am I correctly recalling that Nasa/USGS was producing topographic maps of the Martian surface at least as far back as the Viking missions?

Posted by: remcook Feb 13 2007, 03:03 PM

I'm looking at one from 1976, based on Mariner data

Posted by: algorimancer Feb 13 2007, 03:50 PM

As I thought. I can't wait to hear them announce the first mapping of hematite at Meridiani

Posted by: nprev Feb 13 2007, 05:42 PM

QUOTE (algorimancer @ Feb 13 2007, 06:12 AM)

Am I correctly recalling that Nasa/USGS was producing topographic maps of the Martian surface at least as far back as the Viking missions?

I never saw a contoured one, but I do have several of the USGS airbrushed Mariner 9 maps circa 1973-74...beautiful things, used to look at them for hours (esp. Tharsis).

Posted by: scalbers Aug 25 2007, 04:07 PM

My recollection is that they do have contours. I should dig mine out if I can find them. It looks like this summary has that 1976 topo map listed:

http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/MapBook/mars_small.html

Posted by: Phil Stooke Aug 25 2007, 04:56 PM

I didn't notice this discussion at the time, so here goes...

USGS made topo maps from Mariner 9 and Viking data. Global maps were from very sparse and weak data - like atmospheric density estimated from occultations. Local details could be go from stereo images - very few in Mariner 9 data, lots in Viking. But stereo is no good globally for a big place like Mars (the orientation of the stereo model is not constrained), so topo was still poor for Viking.

Nevertheless, global maps at 1:25 million and 1:15M were compiled, and the 1:5M sheets had a topo version as well. For Viking, 1:2M topo was produced for some sheets of the 120-sheet series. Viking landing site maps included topo at 1:250K.

But only with MOLA did we get good topo globally. And we still lack it for the Moon.

Phil