Selection of the Mars Science Laboratory Landing Site

Golombek, M. P.; Kipp, D.; Vasavada, A. R.; Kirk, R.; Fergason, R. L.; Bellutta, P.; Calef, F.; Larsen, K. W.; Katayama, Yuji; Huertas, A.; Beyer, R. A.; Chen, A.; Parker, T. J.; Pollard, B.; Lee, S.; Sun, Yuhang; Hoover, Rachel; Sladek, H.; Grotzinger, J. P.; Welch, Richard V.; Dobrea, E. Noe; Michalski, J.; Watkins, M. M.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-6339-9_18

Cited by 70 publications

(85 citation statements)

References 140 publications

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“…The third study area presented in this paper is Gale crater, which was selected as the landing site of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity (Golombek et al 2012). This site provides an opportunity rare in planetary science to evaluate the precision and resolution of topographic data by comparing them to more precise and higher resolution data set.…”

Section: Test Data Setsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the Nanedi Valles site we are now able to process all 3 long-arc orbits (h0894_0000, h0905_0000 and h0927_0000) without segmenting the images. Finally, processing image set h4235_0001, which covers the landing site of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover and its rugged science target of Aeolus Mons in Gale crater, provides a rare opportunity to evaluate DTM resolution and precision because extensive High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) DTMs are available (Golombek et al 2012). The HiRISE products have ~50x smaller pixel scale so that discrepancies can mostly be attributed to HRSC.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Community Tools for Cartographic and Photogrammetric Processing of Mars Express HRSC Images

Kirk

Howington-Kraus

Edmundson

et al. 2017

Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.

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ABSTRACT:The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on the Mars Express orbiter (Neukum et al. 2004) is a multi-line pushbroom scanner that can obtain stereo and color coverage of targets in a single overpass, with pixel scales as small as 10 m at periapsis. Since commencing operations in 2004 it has imaged ~77% of Mars at 20 m/pixel or better. The instrument team uses the Video Image Communication And Retrieval (VICAR) software to produce and archive a range of data products from uncalibrated and radiometrically calibrated images to controlled digital topographic models (DTMs) and orthoimages and regional mosaics of DTM and orthophoto data (Gwinner et al. 2009;2010b;2016). Alternatives to this highly effective standard processing pipeline are nevertheless of interest to researchers who do not have access to the full VICAR suite and may wish to make topographic products or perform other (e. g., spectrophotometric) analyses prior to the release of the highest level products. We have therefore developed software to ingest HRSC images and model their geometry in the USGS Integrated Software for Imagers and Spectrometers (ISIS3), which can be used for data preparation, geodetic control, and analysis, and the commercial photogrammetric software SOCET SET (® BAE Systems;Miller and Walker 1993;1995) which can be used for independent production of DTMs and orthoimages. The initial implementation of this capability utilized the then-current ISIS2 system and the generic pushbroom sensor model of SOCET SET, and was described in the DTM comparison of independent photogrammetric processing by different elements of the HRSC team (Heipke et al. 2007). A major drawback of this prototype was that neither software system then allowed for pushbroom images in which the exposure time changes from line to line. Except at periapsis, HRSC makes such timing changes every few hundred lines to accommodate changes of altitude and velocity in its elliptical orbit. As a result, it was necessary to split observations into blocks of constant exposure time, greatly increasing the effort needed to control the images and collect DTMs. Here, we describe a substantially improved HRSC processing capability that incorporates sensor models with varying line timing in the current ISIS3 system (Sides 2017) and SOCET SET. This enormously reduces the work effort for processing most images and eliminates the artifacts that arose from segmenting them. In addition, the software takes advantage of the continuously evolving capabilities of ISIS3 and the improved image matching module NGATE (Next Generation Automatic Terrain Extraction, incorporating area and feature based algorithms, multi-image and multi-direction matching) of SOCET SET, thus greatly reducing the need for manual editing of DTM errors. We have also developed a procedure for geodetically controlling the images to Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) data by registering a preliminary stereo topographic model to MOLA by using the point cloud alignment (pc_align) function of the NASA Ames Stereo Pipe...

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Section: Test Data Setsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Community Tools for Cartographic and Photogrammetric Processing of Mars Express HRSC Images

Kirk

Howington-Kraus

Edmundson

et al. 2017

Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.

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“…The condition of the slope and rock abundance should be focused on in the selection of the landing ellipses. (Golombek, et al, 2012) …”

Section: Selection Of the Landing Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

Mission Profile and Design Challenges for Mars Landing Exploration

Dong

Sun

Rao

et al. 2017

Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.

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ABSTRACT:An orbiter and a descent module will be delivered to Mars in the Chinese first Mars exploration mission. The descent module is composed of a landing platform and a rover. The module will be released into the atmosphere by the orbiter and make a controlled landing on Martian surface. After landing, the rover will egress from the platform to start its science mission. The rover payloads mainly include the subsurface radar, terrain camera, multispectral camera, magnetometer, anemometer to achieve the scientific investigation of the terrain, soil characteristics, material composition, magnetic field, atmosphere, etc. The landing process is divided into three phases (entry phase, parachute descent phase and powered descent phase), which are full of risks. There exit lots of indefinite parameters and design constrain to affect the selection of the landing sites and phase switch (mortaring the parachute, separating the heat shield and cutting off the parachute). A number of new technologies (disk-gap-band parachute, guidance and navigation, etc.) need to be developed. Mars and Earth have gravity and atmosphere conditions that are significantly different from one another. Meaningful environmental conditions cannot be recreated terrestrially on earth. A full-scale flight validation on earth is difficult. Therefore the end-to-end simulation and some critical subsystem test must be considered instead. The challenges above and the corresponding design solutions are introduced in this paper, which can provide reference for the Mars exploration mission.

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“…Slope maps have been widely used for scientific research such as landing site selection (Braun and Manning, 2007;Golombek et al, 1997;Golombek et al, 2012) and rover manoeuvre (Lindemann and Voorhees, 2005;Maimone et al, 2007). Thus, the acquisition of an accurate slope map is of great significance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improved Large-Scale Slope Analysis on Mars Based on Correlation of Slopes Derived With Different Baselines

2017

Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.

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ABSTRACT:The surface slopes of planetary bodies are important factors for exploration missions, such as landing site selection and rover manoeuvre. Generally, high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) such as those generated from the HiRISE images on Mars are preferred to generate detailed slopes with a better fidelity of terrain features. Unfortunately, high-resolution datasets normally only cover small area and are not always available. While lower resolution datasets, such as MOLA, provide global coverage of the Martian surface. Slopes generated from the low-resolution DEM will be based on a large baseline and be smoothed from the real situation. In order to carry out slope analysis at large scale on Martian surface based low-resolution data such as MOLA data, while alleviating the smoothness problem of slopes due to its low resolution, this paper presents an amplifying function of slopes derived from lowresolution DEMs based on the relationships between DEM resolutions and slopes. First, slope maps are derived from the HiRISE DEM (meter-level resolution DEM generated from HiRISE images) and a series of down-sampled HiRISE DEMs. The latter are used to simulate low-resolution DEMs. Then the high-resolution slope map is down-sampled to the same resolution with the slope map from the lower-resolution DEMs. Thus, a comparison can be conducted pixel-wise. For each pixel on the slope map derived from the lowerresolution DEM, it can reach the same value with the down-sampled HiRISE slope by multiplying an amplifying factor. Seven sets of HiRISE images with representative terrain types are used for correlation analysis. It shows that the relationship between the amplifying factors and the original MOLA slopes can be described by the exponential function. Verifications using other datasets show that after applying the proposed amplifying function, the updated slope maps give better representations of slopes on Martian surface compared with the original slopes.

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Selection of the Mars Science Laboratory Landing Site

Cited by 70 publications

References 140 publications

Community Tools for Cartographic and Photogrammetric Processing of Mars Express HRSC Images

Community Tools for Cartographic and Photogrammetric Processing of Mars Express HRSC Images

Mission Profile and Design Challenges for Mars Landing Exploration

Improved Large-Scale Slope Analysis on Mars Based on Correlation of Slopes Derived With Different Baselines

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