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- Title
Meter-Scale Slopes of Candidate MSL Landing Sites from Point Photoclinometry.
- Authors
Beyer, Ross; Kirk, Randolph
- Abstract
Photoclinometry was used to analyze the small-scale roughness of areas within the proposed Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) landing ellipses. The landing ellipses presented in this study are those in Eberswalde crater, Gale crater, and Holden crater (the Mawrth Vallis site could not be measured due to its albedo variations). We were able to constrain surface slopes on length scales comparable to the HiRISE image resolution (0.25 meters/pixel). The MSL mission has various engineering constraints that each candidate landing ellipse must satisfy. These constraints indicate that the statistical value of the slopes at one, two, and five meter baselines are an important criterion. We used our technique to estimate surface slopes across large swaths of each image, and built up slope statistics for the images in each landing ellipse. We are confident that all three final MSL landing site ellipses that could be measured in this study are within the small-scale roughness constraints. Our results have provided input into the landing hazard assessment process.
- Subjects
SLOPES (Physical geography); MARS landing sites; ASTRONAUTICAL laboratories; PHOTOMICROGRAPHY; MARTIAN surface; SMALL scale system; MARTIAN craters; MARS (Planet)
- Publication
Space Science Reviews, 2012, Vol 170, Issue 1-4, p775
- ISSN
0038-6308
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11214-012-9925-x