I know there's alot of photo wizes out there, anyone have an idea as to what the different landers would look like as taken from HiRISE's perspective? I'm sure we'll eventually have pictures of most of them, but just curious what your knowledge can create. Thanks!

Awww, you can't fool me... you've already taken the pictures and just want to be able to say "Look, the real ones are sooooo much better than you guys expected!" when you release them!

It could be, or it could be that I've spend the last two hours looking for a lander, and then realized I didn't really know what I was looking for at all. But I can tell you that I know of at least one picture that will be taken by HiRISE of another visitor to Mars from our planet.

Hmmm, let me guess... does it being with "M" and end in "ars Global Surveyor"?

Seriously, I think that's a great idea of yours tuvas, bringing in the UMSF image mages to assist you in your search. If anyone can help you track down missing hardware on Mars, our guys can, and I'm sure they'll be delighted to help.

Tuvas, this won't help with a Beagle 2 or Polar Lander, where we didn't get a pan from the surface... but in cases where we got a pan the real clincher will be whether you can identify a pattern of surface features around the blob which you think is the lander. The best way to do that is with a polar version of the pan. See for instance Viking 1 and Pathfinder polars which are already on this forum if you do a search.

Phil

What's the rough illumination angle for near-equatorial objects? I can do some renders based on VRML or other rough and ready models - the one thing that my MERB @ HiRISE res simulation is fundamentally lacking is shadows

Doug

Yes, panorama images, for that reason we should be able to find the Viking landers and Pathfinder/Soyourner, with a limited chanse for those where we got one reliable landing ellipse. Theres one suggested location, a small crater, for Beagle2 that there might be an idea to have a look at.

But someone in another thread asked if we could go look for all landers there ever have been including Soviet/Russian ones, and on that im strongly with Phil Stooke - a needle in a haystack search unless we are VERY lucky and happen to catch the reflex of sunlight against one metal surface. Nah, I shouldnt even have suggested that possibility.

Well, it wouldn't be MGS, that would be relatively easy to find, it's the only dot against a black background, not to mention somewhat larger than would otherwise be. But, I'll give you a non-comprehensive list of possible targets.

1. Spirit
2. Pathfinder
3. Viking 1
4. Viking 2
5. MPO (Not really possible at this time, maybe later)
6. Beagle.


So, if you could find the polar panoramics for those spacecraft, well, there's a good chance that they could be useful. I think Spirit would be easy enough to find as well, it's the non-rovers that make life more difficult. Rovers have the tendency to find something interesting a.k.a. easily visible from space, for example, Oportunity happened to place itself right next to a big crater.

Here's Pathfinder:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...amp;#entry73883
(post 1 on that page)

and here's Viking 1:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ic=570&st=0 (post 13 on that page)

and, not on UMSF and poor quality, but I don't have a better one yet - here's Viking 2:

http://publish.uwo.ca/~pjstooke/v2reproj.jpg

and, Tuvas - tomorrow from the office I'll send you something better on Viking 2.

Phil

I'm SURE I did a Beagle simulation at various resolutions a while back....I'll see if I can find it. V1 and 2 have MOC images to go from so that shouldn't be too hard and not too many rocks cast a big HGA shadow that I'm sure the viking craft will cast.

Ahh - found something....not that great but...
http://www.djellison.plus.com/lander_from_orbit.jpg

The problem with B2 is that if it got to the point of deploying...it will cast almost no shadow at all.

Doug

OK, here is something on Viking 1, with Viking 2 to follow.

The attached image is a MOC cPROTO with the location of Vking 1 from the MSSS press release. I can't get an exact match to prominent ridges (crater rims) north and east of the lander from this location. I get a better match at the location I have marked here. Fearless predictions are often wrong! - but I'm making one anyway.

Phil

Click to view attachment

And for Viking 2... another fearless prediction. This has been an ongoing problem. My image below extends eastwards from the area shown on the MSSS press release, which can be found at:

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/05/05/

The Viking 2 panorama includes an area of low hills to the east, and I have found it absolutely impossible to match those hills from the MSSS site. My image also shows two nearby locations in MOC image E0201291. One was suggested by Tim Parker, the oither by me. Mine is further out, but seems to me to match the distant topography better. But mine isn't a perfect match either. In truth I have little confidence in any of these three locations, but I generally prefer mine, or some place near mine. My analysis has been shown as a poster at LPSC:

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2004/pdf/1074.pdf

Phil

Click to view attachment

Are you looking for a graphical representation? Here's an image from the MGS site depicting an overhead schematic of Viking 2, and a portion of a MOC cPROTO image that Malin and his team conclude is the actual lander (with which Phil Stooke is in disagreement).

Caption:MOC2-1082b; NASA/JPL/MSSS
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/05/05/

Never saw that image before, EGD...looks compelling to me, seems to be easily verifiable by HiRISE.

The trouble is, a hundred other objects might look similarly compelling.

Phil

Oh, no argument there, Phil... ...all I meant was that hopefully HiRISE can confirm or deny.

I agree with Phil. Though the object is "compelling" there are problematic issues with the arrangement of the assorted light colored shapes. These could be due to material deposition, or lighting, or maybe it's just a fortuitous arrangement of rocks. I don't have the patience to do it, but I would bet that a search through the larger image would find similar compelling shapes.

And for the record, I'm not qualified to weigh-in on this debate. I am keeping an open mind however because Phil has raised some reasonable doubts based on the geometry of Viking's observations.

To show just how tricky this game is, look at the initial "discovery" of MPL by Malin's team, it's chute, blast zone etc. When I saw that I was blown away and the case seemed closed, until they later concluded that in fact this was not MPL but merely a serendipitous alignment of geologic surface features.

HiRISE will be able to confirm any such ideas from MOC, to verify or not every lander, we do have that good of resolution, MOC is merely close, but not quite. Also, the color strip helps alot as well, landers tend to reflect well in all frequencies, which isn't common at Mars.

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=3495

Had a hack at simulating as much as I can...if anyone knows of VRML models for other landers etc - let me know...with some dimensions

Doug

It is my understanding that we have no real good idea(maybe at least a landing elipse ) of the early soviet landers on mars ? Did not one of them transmit a partial picture from the surface? and will we attempt to find them with hirise?

The Mars 3 signal from the surface is not thought to be a true image - by Don Mitchell who knows as much as anyone about it - and the mission scientists at the time thought so as well.

The Soviet lander locations are fairly large ellipses - I would think at least a 1 degree (60 km radius) uncertainty would be as good as they could be predicted, given all the uncertainties. That's a lot of HIRISE images! Too many to justify spending on such an uncertain target. More precise figures get thrown around, but they are usually going to be tracking solutions with the uncertainty omitted. As an example, I consider the Luna 9 site on the moon is most likely 40 km off the position usually given, which is just from tracking. Mars results will be less precise than that.

Phil

I was talking about this to a colleague earlier and I said that they will almost certainly get great pictures of every lander we 'know' ( V1, V2, MPF, MERA, MERB ) and possibly MPL and B2 as we have a REASONABLE idea of where they might be...

But as for finding old Russian stuff, I suggested it would be like trying to wallpaper a living room with first class stamps : Expensive, Time Consuming, and really not a great idea.

Doug

I think it's pretty well established that using HiRISE to search for the Russian landers would be a waste of time. However, let's say we know of the location of an ellipse that has a high likelihood of containing the wreckage. And then let's say that there's some wacko community of people with time on their hands (ahem) who would love to spend their free time searching within any HiRISE image that happened to be taken within that ellipse to see if it just happened to contain that wreckage. Forgetting for the moment the odds of any HiRISE image happening to contain a Russian lander, would the lander be large enough or bright enough to look distinctly different from the surroundings?

--Emily

That's a nasty cough you have there, Emily.

Mars 3 apparently landed intact, but I think it was quite small, so even HIRISE might put only a few pixels on it. Mars 2 and Mars 6 crashed, so they might be in pieces, and/or more 'dug in' to the surface material. And we have 30 years of dust to contend with. Cleaning evnts can still happen of course. And color might help.

Hard to know, of course, but I still think it would be hard. And the hardest thing would be this: if objects are only a very small number of pixels across, they are going to be very hard to distinguish from rocks unless color is absolutely definitive. That's where we are with MOC images of Vikings 1 and 2. Think about that absolutely gorgeous image of Opportunity on the lip of Victoria. We know it's Opportunity because we have those great surface pictures (so we know where to look), and the shape is just resolved enough, and there are no other boulders nearby. But in a Viking-2-like sea of boulders even HIRISE cannot be guaranteed to distinguish between a spacecraft and the rocks unless color or shape is definitive. I do think we'll get unambiguous identifications of Vikings 1 and 2 and Pathfinder because of the pans. But I don't expect an unambiguous identification of Sojourner (if it moved after its last known position), let alone any Russian lander. I'm open-minded about Beagle 2 and Polar lander.

Phil

...while leaving a bad taste in your mouth.

Ours are self-adhesive

Doug

Mars 2 was never heard from after separation or after entering the atmosphere. I think it was a silent-before-entry design, but I'm not sure. I don't recall but it may have been on a too steep trajectory and if so may have broken up during entry. We don't know if there's pieces big enough to look for, much less where to look.

Mars 6 failed at retrofire or touchdown. Landing sequence was like the MER rovers with a last second retrofire after parachute descent, so it's probably intact. If retrofire failed, it went crunch like the MER heatshield or considerably slower. Same thing applies to Polar Lander.

Mars 6 and Polar lander had parachutes that should be visible, plus jettisoned heatshields. The problem with Mars 6 is the unsearchably big search area.

Polar lander and it's entry debris should be about the only things in the landing zone with characteristic maximum separations other than wind sculptured textures on the smooth rolling layered terrain. Meteorites or "bounce rock" type martian rocks should be rare due to the young surface age of the polar plains. I expect we'll nab an "almost certain" polar lander.

Beagle is more problematic a target but there should also be parachutes visible. Rock confusion is the problem in Isidis.

if anyone has chute dimensions, airbag sizes, lander dimensions, or any VRML stuff with dimensions of some sort - let me know and I can drop it into my 'Lander Zoo' 3ds max scene

Doug

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/05/05/

Think they'll take another look at this MPL site with HiRISE? The first image looks quite convincing, but later images seemed to rule it out. I wonder if 5 years of weathering could have altered the site considerably by the time the second image was taken?

Is there any polar projections that don't show the horizon, but rather what an overhead view of the area would look like? Thanks!

Tuvas - I've never seen true overhead photomaps of the Vikings. There are some for Pathfinder, on Photojournal and the archived mission website (and published in JGR and Science at the time). The closest you can get for the Vikings are going to be my polars, linked to above, because I do a projection that partially corrects for viewing angle so the nearby areas are close to overhead, but it's not controlled very well.

Phil

This image shows the eastern horizon seen from Viking 2 under two different lighting conditions - with EXAGGERATED relief. Matching these features would really help nail down the location. Unfortunately I have struggled for years to identify them without much success. The bright spots seen in the afternoon view (middle) are in terrain which looks hillier and brighter in MOC images, and they can probably be matched OK, but the darker hills in the middle distance have defied my efforts. I had better candidates from "my" location that from the MSSS location, but even those candidates were far from perfect.

Phil

Click to view attachment

There are those of us who are involved in the love of past and future of science and planetary exploration but who also respect the anthropology and history of the people and the spacecraft and launchers that brought us us to this point.Hirise should be used first for new knowledge.secondly it should be used for site selection for future landers.........................but if the first two goals should also cover an area that has a human interests such as history then why not?........................
after all I have over the last decade spent many wacko computer time on the behave of the seti folks so why would I not honor the russians and there past attempts at the exporations of our solar system.indeed look at there fantastic daring at venus.

Someday, we will find the Soviet Mars landers, but it will most likely be with the aid of a hubble-class (KH-11? spy sat) global mapper around 2020 or 2025, with something like 5 cm resolution/pixel, and they'll be spotted by intelligent software throwing up a "query" flag to the operator as they're doing geologic studies with multispectral rock classification and population shape/size/distribution analysis.

"Hey... this is one funny looking rock...No spectal match in the catalog."

Hi Phil:

Of course this is true in the case of overhead image products, because the software to generate terrain meshes didn't exist back then. I suppose someone clever might be able to find a way to adapt some commercial stereo mapping software to the Viking Lander cameras, but it'll be complicated because the spearation angle for the stereo changes through the scene since the cameras don't rotate together.

But there are overhead topographic products from the Viking Lander science team (Sidney Liebes, Jr., "Viking Lander Atlas of Mars," NASA Contractor Rept. 3568, 1982).

-Tim.

At least one of the Soviet Mars landers is on the list of potential future imaging targets for HiRISE. The knowledge of it's location is pretty poor, of course, but the team member doing the targeting has been in contact with some of the Russian science team members for their best guestimates as to where it landed.

Though there are no ground panoramas from the Russian landers, the search might be "helped" by the fact that they were probably quite large (I've not checked into this as yet), since they tended to build "bathysphere-like" vessels with off-the-shelf instruments looking out windows from an STP environment. Does someone know whether the russian Mars landers were similar in configuration to the Veneras?

In any case, now that I know what 4 landers and their associated hardware components look like on another planet ( ), I'm hopeful that, if Hirise is lucky enough to image one of the Russian landing sites, the man-made artifacts will be recognizeable.

-Tim.

Actually, finding the landers is quite easy, all you do is look for the unusually bright spot, and there will be something unusual, every lander I've seen HiRISE spot was like that (The number I will hold to myself, but I was the first one to spot one of the landers). HiRISE's resolution is good enough to photograph any such lander. The problem is it's location, the sheer area where they could have landed is enourmous..

The Viking landers are NOT bright spots. At least not all of the lander. They're a mix of bright glints (off the RTG covers) and shadows. VL-1 is completely indistinguishable from its surroundings in the MOC C-PROTO, which averaged these DN values over the lander.

Which lander were you first to spot?

planetarily,
-Tim.

As for finding the Soviet landers, I would think it would easiest to find the parachutes first, because of their much larger size, then look near them for the landers themselves (assuming they're not dust covered). How easy they would be to find would depend on the color of the parachutes, white being easiest to spot, of course. Anyone happen to know what color(s) they were?

Sorry I duplicated some of what edstrick said. One other thought about trying to find parachutes on Mars is that how well they show up in an image will depend on the amount of "foldedness" they experience when they hit the ground, as this will affect how many pixels they occupy.

On the planetary society's latest report on the rovers, Steve Squyres says that you can see the folds in Spirit's parachute with HiRISE.

tim53, and what about the accumulated dust on the Viking landers ... although they might have been cleaned as well by Martian winds

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6211870.stm

I have commented on this post before. I believe that scientific goals in imaging come first.second american space craft that landed and transmittted images are of value in that they allow us to triangulate there locations from more recent images from orbit.....................
third, future landers need our help in those fantastic lander conferences we all enjoy!
fourth public particapation in scince is well founded including the history of science so IF you image something and there is a WACK community that wants to particapate why why not ?(seti was a wacko science remember ? )

IMHO, at least a cursory search for the landers that didn't make it is worthwhile for engineering purposes alone. Mars is hard (not my words; Louis Friedman's, director of TPS). Any understanding we may gain of what felled these missions is worth acquiring, be it a systems engineering fault or the environmental variables of the planet.

Quick example: Since the Martian atmosphere apparently varies its density considerably not only by locale with respect to topography but also due toi seasonal cycles, it would be interesting to see if, say, Mars 6's radar altimeter (if it had one) was programmed to follow a predetermined rate of descent & trigger critical events based on descent time rather than closure rate...and, unfortunately, the actual descent profile didn't match the model.

This is a random & completely hypothetical example, but seeing things like chutes, backshells, etc. would do much to constrain possible failure modes when compared to lander programs & capabilities.

Well, in the case of Mars-6, it was going based on a pre-launch estimate. Because of receiver failures, from three months or so after leaving earth, Mars-6, the lander and the bus, were unable to receive ground commands. So, the fact that it made it at all is remarkable. But still, its failure isn't of much use today - the fact that it is desireable to have had contact with a lander within six months of landing is and was obvious. In otherwords, whether or not they new that conditions had changed, due to the fact that Mars-6 could no longer receive commands, it wouldn't have made a difference.

I hear you, Ted; I just used Mars 6 as a random pick. My point was that there are still many complexities about landing on Mars that we need to understand in many domains. For example, IIRC Oppy came perilously close to not making it due to an unexpectedly thin atmopheric profile...and that's just one variable out of who knows how many, both natural & technological.