=50km
=50km
This special section of the Mars Atlas will let you browse Viking Orbiter images of the area that has been selected as the landing site for Mars Pathfinder, an upcoming mission led by JPL. It will also show the estimated probability of landing in each displayed area, as a piechart and percentage. As a further refinement, to show which part of each image is most likely to contain the actual, landing site, histogram curves are down on each edge. Click at any point on the above map. If you click on an area that is covered here, you will see a more detailed view of that area, plus a link to the full-resolution Viking Orbiter frame. If you click outside the available coverage, you will see a marked-up version of the map, showing where coverage is available.
This is moot now. Here's where it actually landed:
landingsitemos.jpg (682K)
The image here containing the actual landing site, Twin Peaks, Far Knob, etc.
is 004A27.
A year after Pathfinder landed, the MOC camera aquired
this new, even higher resolution image
of the site.
These images were located based on JPL's announced landing ellipse and processed using fairly conventional techniques (but with home-grown software). See disclaimers.
Note: In the map (digital image mosaic), found in all copies of the map of this area, but especially in the contrasted-enhanced map at the top of this page, there's a dark feature that brackets the center of the ellipse. This turns out to be a mosaicking artifact. It doesn't appear in 827A23, the image used for that part of the map. It also isn't visible in the high-resolution clear images.
Kanef@Ptolemy.ARC.NASA.gov