HiRISE and Mars Polar Lander Options

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

Looking at the images of the Spirit/Opportunity landing site, it seems many of the features such as tracks and rocket blast markings have faded considerably often to the point of being invisible in the nearly three years since landing.

This had me thinking about the MGS images taken in the hope of finding MPL. Initially it was reported that MGS had spotted the lander, one image had a white spot/streak interpreted as the parachute and a dark patch with a spot in the centre not too far off, taken to be the blast zone of the rockets with the lander in the centre.

However another image taken 5 years later seemed to discount this theory - the features had faded or changed significantly. BUT, seeing how much the rover sites have changed in an even shorter time, wouldn't the same happen to the MPL site in 5 years - perhaps to an even greater degree with the more extreme seasonal changes at that location. Also, the latest HiRISE images show just how difficult it has been to spot the landers on the surface with MGS, the Viking sites in particular.

I hope HiRISE takes another look at this spot.

Mars Polar Lander NOT Found, MSSS article:
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/10/17/

[nprev]

I like C!

I dunno, man, just don't know. They look more compelling to me than other purported finds...in fact, the "lander" almost looks like it made a successful descent. That topography is just a mess, though, and definitely promotes the Rorschach Effect.

We might need to send a cam with 1 cm resolution to find the damn thing in this stuff. Guess there's still a possibility we might get super-lucky and catch a specular reflection if there's some reasonably bare metal exposed & the geometry happens to be right.

[ugordan]

Neglecting the feasibility of actually acquiring that dataset, can you imagine what an effort it would be to inspect the entire landing ellipse at 1cm resolution? We're talking about a 600 times larger pixel area than even this (already huge) amount. That would undoubtedly require a computer pattern recognition algorithm, no human would venture into sifting through that systematically. All the more because we don't even know what we're looking for - deployed chutes, broken heat shields or just a single crater. It's not that easy to tell a computer "find everything out of the ordinary!" either.

I wonder what effects to metal surfaces (or parachute) a 9 year exposure to this environment would produce. Are we even sure this sublimation and frosting process didn't already bury all hardware or at least coat it with a thin layer of dust and rendered it part of that environment? Additionally, how does albedo in this region compare to equatorial sites, are we expecting metal surfaces and the parachute to jump out or is the terrain here much brighter (apart from certain very dark areas)?

So many unknowns...

[tedstryk]

I am choosing to ignore this thread until Phoenix is safely on the ground

[tim53]

I am choosing to ignore this thread until Phoenix is safely on the ground

Hi folks!


I don't know if it's been said elsewhere, but the easiest way to display these huge jpeg2000 files is to download a copy of ExpressView from Lizardtech.com.

I've been using that for searching for hardware, even though I have Photoshop CS3 with the jpeg2000 plugin installed, as Expressview is a lot faster at opening the files.

In my own search of the MPL site (and other lander hardware) images, I found it takes me about 4 hours to search each HiRISE image.

I have a "candidate" possibility for MPL, but there are problems with that set of objects being the lander, not the least of which is that nothing stands out in the MOC images of that same area taken within weeks of the loss of MPL. Sadly, it's dark there now, and it will be several months before any search imaging can resume.

I'll tell you where this object is, but it might be more fun to see if someone else notices it - sort of a qualitative eyeball calibration exercise, in effect!

-Tim.

[elakdawalla]

I have a "candidate" possibility for MPL, but there are problems with that set of objects being the lander, not the least of which is that nothing stands out in the MOC images of that same area taken within weeks of the loss of MPL. Sadly, it's dark there now, and it will be several months before any search imaging can resume.

Just to be clear, is your "candidate" the lander, an impact site, or the parachute? I'm preparing a Web page with info for the search and I was going to tell people that the parachute/backshell was the best object to be searching for, with examples of what they look like at the successful landing sites -- should I also try to give examples of what the lander/crash site should look like? If so I'll need some help from image magicians here to come up with sample images.

--Emily

[tim53]

Just to be clear, is your "candidate" the lander, an impact site, or the parachute? I'm preparing a Web page with info for the search and I was going to tell people that the parachute/backshell was the best object to be searching for, with examples of what they look like at the successful landing sites -- should I also try to give examples of what the lander/crash site should look like? If so I'll need some help from image magicians here to come up with sample images.

--Emily

MPL searchers beware: Potential spoilers to follow!


The image my gizmoid is in is PSP_005536_1030. The objects look similar to a "lander" and "backshell", but they're too big. The putative backshell object is about 5 meters across, whereas the actual backshell is just over half that size. So, if it's real hardware, it's sitting on a rise that's similar in brightness and shape, so that it resembles a single conical object 5 meters across at the base - not impossible, but reducing the chances (and definitely the certainty) that it's hardware. The putative lander object does not match the shading I get when I illuminate a lander model with the same lighting geometry as the HiRISE image, though I initially thought it did, when I compared it to a simulated image produced by MSSS during the search with MOC. Still, not impossible for it to be a lander, particularly if it's tilted or oriented or mangled in a manner that's hard to anticipate. But the poor match to the model does reduce the possibility that it's hardware and not a natural object.

When I first saw these objects last fall, I got pretty excited by their apparent similarities to other lander hardware we've seen in HiRISE images and the fact that they're within a few kilometers of the center of the Nav ellipse. But in addition to the scales and lighting issues, there is no bright patch near the putative backshell that might be a parachute. So, I wondered if it might be dust mantled after all this time. And so I've searched corresponding MOC image coverage (specifically M1104140, taken less than 2 months after the loss of MPL), and there aren't any anomalously bright OR dark spots at the locations of these features. The color coverage by HiRISE does run over these features but, unlike the other hardware we've seen in color, neither of these objects appears blue-tinted in color - they match the surrounding surface color.

So, if this is the lander, it was more or less "successful" at reaching the surface intact, it's oriented wrong by about 45 degrees or so, possibly tilted, and it was mantled so as to not stand out from its surroundings rather quickly after the landing... ...in other words, it's not bloody likely to be the lander.

Early on in my search, I identified a dark spot in a CTX image to the south (and thus downrange) of the center of the nav ellipse, and a few hundred meters beyond the HiRISE coverage. It'll be interesting to see this spot in HiRISE come spring, in the off chance it's an impact site. There is no MOC coverage of this feature (at least not of sufficient resolution, IIRC), as it was just outside the search area for MPL. But except that this is an isolated dark spot in that image (beyond a field of dark splotches in that area), there's nothing particularly remarkable about it, and it might just be a site of defrosting or a dark dust streak, and thus a natural feature.

-Tim.