[X] My Assistant

[Gsnorgathon]

I seem to remember that far slope that looks like it's got gullies (!) on it, but it's a fabulous image and you can post it as many times as you like, AFAIC. I know that whatever process formed those features was dryer than the proverbial bone, but nonetheless it sends chills down my spine. Whatever you call those features, they're a great object lesson that just because something looks like x doesn't mean it is x.

[edstrick]

I just love Phil's Surveryor panoramas, cause I cut my teeth on the JPL TR series mission reports. Gobs of memories.

Regarding the comments about the softness of most of the terrain. The highlands are a "megabreccia" and while a lot of the rock was well-sintered in hot ejecta blankets and some comes from melt-sheets, A lot of the rocks are heavily shocked or poorly-reassembled and rather (as I vaguely recall from Apollo 16) friable. The result is that stuff on the ejecta blanket is probably rather more crumbled in the course of ejection and fallout and impact that we'd assume from smaller, closer-to-everyday-life explosive events.

You want a spectacularly nasty place to land, look at the Lunar Orbiter V images of Tycho's floor..... the soles of my feet hurt just looking at those pics...

[tedstryk]

I repeat my suspicion that Phil hitched a ride on some top secret test vehicle and simply rephotographed the areas

[dvandorn]

You want a spectacularly nasty place to land, look at the Lunar Orbiter V images of Tycho's floor..... the soles of my feet hurt just looking at those pics...

Well, yeah -- but I'll point out that the same Lunar Orbiter V images of the Tycho area show the Surveyor VII landing site. From orbit, it looks like a complete mess of ropy ridges and sheer cliffs. But from the ground, it becomes apparent that the slopes are, on average, far more gentle than they appear from above.

Our Moon always seems to look rougher and more rugged from orbit than it does from the ground. I don't know if that's a lesson to be learned, or a trap to be avoided, as we head out to explore other Solar System bodies.

-the other Doug

[Phil Stooke]

Thanks for the comments.

I'm at LPSC this week, and I spent the morning at the LPI library (skipping the morning sessions, but I did pick up the afternon session on Titan and get to hear volcanopele's talk - very good, jp! At LPI I gave them a poster containing all my Surveyor pans, and a CD with the full resolution digital data. That is supposed to be copied and distributed to other RPIFs soon, and placed online.

Also at LPI I had a chance to look at some Viking site selection stuff, and by chance found a report on the Viking Rover proposed mission - including four sets of example sites plus traverses. And so the Mars atlas takes shape...

Phil

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Lunakhod panoramas:
http://selena.sai.msu.ru/Home/Spacecrafts/.../lunokhod1e.htm
http://selena.sai.msu.ru/Home/Spacecrafts/.../lunokhod2e.htm

Some of these are also in Philip Stooke's book "Int Atlas of Lunar Exploration" pages 281-287 and pages 377-379.

[Phil Stooke]

Yes, it's true. Dr. Shevchenko graciously allowed me to use material from their website.

But check out the bottom panorama from Lunokhod 2 - it's also to be found in the Lunokhod 1 set. This is an error - it is in fact from Lunokhod 1.

Phil

[tedstryk]

Yes, it's true. Dr. Shevchenko graciously allowed me to use material from their website.

But check out the bottom panorama from Lunokhod 2 - it's also to be found in the Lunokhod 1 set. This is an error - it is in fact from Lunokhod 1.

Phil

How do you know it isn't a view that just happened to be exactly the same? Today a student claimed that it was pure coincidence that her 1500 word paper was an exact copy of an essay on a free essays website. She insisted that that she is an honest person and that this is just a really bizarre coincidence. If this is true, who's to say that the panorama is mislabeled?

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

More Lunar panorama's at Don P Mitchell's website: http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogMoon.htm

[Phil Stooke]

Ted is right. I should be more careful.

(was it also a coincidence that her name just happened to be "insert name here"?)


Phil

[centsworth_II]

...She insisted that that she is an honest person and that this is just a really bizarre coincidence....

Who knows? It sounds a lot more likely than a bunch of monkeys typing out a Shakespearian play.

[tedstryk]

Sadly, I have found "oversights" like that one as well.

[Phil Stooke]

I put this together for someone else, but I thought it might be of interest here.

This is a comparison of a circular reprojection of my Surveyor 6 panorama with a Lunar Orbiter 2 image (frame 121-H3 if you're interested). I have labelled twelve points of correspondence, and the location of the lander.

Phil

[edstrick]

Surveyor 6's Sinus Medii landing site was the most boring of all Surveyor sites. An old, very well gardened regolith with no nearby impacts that had punched through the regolith to bedrock, it left the spacecraft on a regolith plain with few, mostly small rocks to look at. Only the topographic relief on the horizon of a nearby subdued wrinkle ridge helped break the relative monotony.

Surveyor 1 landed on much younger mare, and had more rocks, and a generally fresher, crisper appearance, pluss the hills of the Flamsteed ring on part of the horizon.

Surveyor 3 and 5 landed in and partly in craters, and 7 on the Tycho ejecta blanket.

I still want to see the floor of Tycho from a lander. Look at that at FULL resolution in the Lunar Orbiter 5 hi-rez images and boggle.

[imipak]

I still want to see the floor of Tycho from a lander. Look at that at FULL resolution in the Lunar Orbiter 5 hi-rez images and boggle.

Good tip... it's quite a *clink*