[X] My Assistant

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Hindsight being 20/20, I have been and continue to be more puzzled by the selection of Chryse & Utopia Planitia as the landing sites for V1 & V2 respectively. Hard to understand why Meridiani was not picked, for example, and now the Phoenix site shows very benign terrain as well (save for the winter weather, of course.)

Admittedly we did not have high-res (by today's standards) orbital imagery of Mars then, and IIRC a lot of the selection was driven by Earth-bound radar estimation of terrain roughness. Was the main driver the expected science return from the sites rather then enhanced probability of successful landing? Was the radar data of insufficient resolution so that its interpretation was problematic? (Thinking Meridiani here; presumably the polar regions would be pretty hard to get decent returns from due to the incidence angle.)

Whenever I look at Big Joe in Chryse or that big boulder not far at all from V2, I get a cold chill. We were VERY lucky on both counts.