Movie of NASA's Sites on for Future Landings & Search for Ancient Life

"It's common to imagine that the human story on will only begin when humans actually get there, when they stand beneath its dusty sky and look around them at its oddly close horizon. I don't know who those people will be, or when they will get there, or where on the planet they will first set their feet. But I know that for all their importance, they will not be a new story's beginning, rather a new chapter. And I know that their landing site is somewhere on the map in front of me, already charted, if not yet chosen."

Oliver Morton, Mapping Mars

The University of Arizona-based HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) team has released 143 color images and a movie of possible landing sites for NASA's Science Laboratory, a mission to deploy a long-distance rover carrying a deck of sophisticated science instruments on in 2010.

(Image is Syrtis Major -a smooth volcanic plain and possible landing site)

Color is a huge aid to geologists who have been trying to discriminate different surface materials and their relation to the topography, UA Professor Alfred S. McEwen, HiRISE principal investigator said. "Color clearly identifies basic material distinctions like dust, sand or rocks, light-toned layered material, and frost or ice," he said. Color also helps geologists correlate layers in the Martian terrain.

"Color data are proving very useful in interpreting geologic processes and history on Mars," McEwen said.

HiRISE also released a color movie, scrolling over one potential Science Laboratory landing site in Nili Fossae, at 21 degrees north latitude and 74 degrees east latitude. The animation shows a range of enhanced colors that correspond to what Reconnaissance Orbiter's imaging spectrometer, called CRISM, has determined to be hydrated clay minerals and unaltered volcanic rocks.

"The clay minerals are especially promising in the search for ancient life on Mars," said McEwen.

The spacecraft has excellent pointing control thanks to super engineering, but HiRISE pixels cover an extremely small angular diameter, which gives the camera its ability to sample the surface at 30 centimeters per pixel from 300 kilometers above the surface. The slightest spacecraft motion causes shifts in the camera pointing in unpredictable ways.

The UA-led Phoenix Scout Mission to was saved from being launched to a dangerous, boulder-strewn landing site when researchers saw HiRISE images taken soon after the camera began taking science images in late 2006. Images from HiRISE and from Arizona State University's Thermal Emission Imaging System on Odyssey were used in choosing where the Phoenix spacecraft will land on May 25, 2008.

McEwen said the HiRISE camera will try to image the Phoenix spacecraft landing site again in January, although it could be so cloudy the camera might have to wait an extra month or two for a clear view.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Comments

Posted by: blellow | December 14, 2007 at 07:02 AM

Even if mars lost mortal inteligencebeings like human of earth mortal life still exsist on mars in forms of grass and some crops and microbobs,and some immortal spirits live there

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