20 – Mars2020 Landing Site Candidates

Play Episode (34:23)

Ahead of the science, the surface operations, the tricky landing, interplanetary cruise, & launch of a NASA flagship class rover like Mars2020, the difficult decision of where to send the mission must be made. For the successor of Curiosity, this process is nearing completion as the 3rd workshop has narrowed the remaining candidates to three. Jake takes a long look at the mission requirements, landing site criteria, and Mars mapping techniques before exploring Jezero Crater, North East Syrtis and Gusev Crater to see what secrets might lie beneath the regolith.

Links

The Mars2020 Mission

• Landing Site Workshop Page
• Science Objectives
• Landing Site Criteria (Bottom of page)

Mapping Mars

• Mars Quadrangles
• Airy Crater
  • Image with Mariner 9, Viking 1, and Mars Global Surveyor images
• Airy-0

The Landing Sites

• Google Mars KMZ file to explore the landing ellipses on Google Earth

Jezero Crater

• Jezero HIRISE image
• SETI Talk with Tim Goudge (53:37), who led the Jezero team’s presentation

North East Syrtis

• NE Syrtis HIRISE Image

Gusev Crater/Columbia Hills

• Columbia Hills HIRISE Image
• Spirit’s Traverse
• Why Return to the Columbia Hills? by Alex Longo

WeMartians music is “RetroFuture” and “Electrodoodle” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/