Where would you land on Mars?

[RuBisCO]

Lets say you're in charge of a manned Mars mission, to land on Mars, well Mars is not a point, it is a world, so where on the planet would you land? State the coordinates and pros and cons of your landing site. 

[A35K]

The top of Mount Olympus!

Pros: You're on the tallest mountain in the Solar System! (And dv for orbit will be somewhat reduced)

Cons: Hard to land, less atmosphere to slow you down.

[RuBisCO]

I don't know about landing on Olympus, that would need to be an all propulsive landing. 

I would land in Gale Crater,  5.4°S 137.8°E, MSL is there, it is -4 km below average martian surface level so more of air to brake in, it's reasonably flat where MSL landed, it is near the equator, and MSL has determine that there is 1-3% water in soil all over the place, that there are perchlorate deposits that store more water and even become wet at times. Perhaps enough water could be extracted to sustain and fuel a 6 man outpost.  

 

References: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v8/n5/full/ngeo2412.html

[Findthepin1]

Hellas Planitia. Lots of air, reasonable latitude, slope water line things, varied areology, etc. In particular, an interesting valley near Coronae Scopulus that I found on Google Earth. It has a flat bottom and channels drain into it. It looks like it was once a lake. It's near the lowest point on the planet, a crater I named Wilshire Crater (long story) in January this year. Unfortunately the IAU named it Badwater in March or April 2015.

 

Pros:

thicker air means more aerodynamics, increased functionality of parachutes, better atmospheric ISRU

opportunity to study RSLs up close

land on what seems to be a dry lake with channels

it is close enough to the equator that it can get above freezing

there is frost sometimes in Hellas Planitia

Cons:

More deltaV to orbit

Potential contamination of environment

[RuBisCO]

Well the latest in large mars landing systems (http://www.ssdl.gatech.edu/papers/conferencePapers/AIAA-2009-6684.pdf) is that A: No parachute big enough has been built or may even be possible. B:Inflatable heat shields up to 50 meter in diameter would do the job of heat shield and supersonic parachute, none the less mass fractions on landed will be at best 50%, usually 30%, that means the landing system, heat shield, propellant, retrorockets, etc,  is at least half the weight! Now this study is rather pessimistic (they put a backshell on their simulated vehicles, that is unnecessary) but small fixed heat shields and bionics are clearly not going to work for landing cargo between 10-40 metric tons. All this means Landing altitude is very VERY important, the lower, the more cargo can be brought down. 

Hellas is the lowest place on mars, -7 to -8 km, that means could improve mass fraction deliverable, but it is off ~40° from the equator, that makes it poor place to take off from and reach an orbiting mother ship and not good for solar power. But there is evidence for glaciers under the ground in Hellas. A nuclear powered outpost in the right spot deep down in Hellas could have plenty of water to make up for being so off the equator. The only problem is I can't find any cooridnates for the supposed underground glaciers in Hellas. 

 -- http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/?IDNumber=pia11433

Edited December 3, 2015 by RuBisCO
added photo of covered glaciers in Hellas

[cantab]

Where would I land, or where would I aim?

Anyway, on a cursory glance Isidis Planitia looks like a good bet. It's the "bay" in Mars' northern basin, north of Hellas. It's one of the lower spots on Mars near the equator, and is a large flat area to target for the landing. Though not as deep as Hellas it's still pretty good.

Gale Crater is a good bet if you can land as precisely as Curiosity did or better. The crater floor is actually pretty low, a shade lower than Isidis I think, and it's an area that has already been geologically characterised.

If you can land in Gale Crater, you can also land in the Valles Marineris. That could be a great area to study. However I'd be concerned, is there a chance of ongoing slides on the canyon walls?

[cubinator]

Acidalia Planitia...just cause... 

JK I would land somewhere with lots of riverbeds, or in the northern hemisphere where the ocean was. Those would be ideal places to look for evidence of ancient life. The best place would probably be the edge of a river delta as you get stuff carried from upstream and stuff from the ocean.

[RuBisCO]

Well Hydraotes Colles in the Valles Marineris Looks like a perfect landing spot, directly on the equator at  0.02°S 326.32° and -3-4 km low.  

[fredinno]

2 hours ago, cantab said:

Where would I land, or where would I aim?

Anyway, on a cursory glance Isidis Planitia looks like a good bet. It's the "bay" in Mars' northern basin, north of Hellas. It's one of the lower spots on Mars near the equator, and is a large flat area to target for the landing. Though not as deep as Hellas it's still pretty good.

Gale Crater is a good bet if you can land as precisely as Curiosity did or better. The crater floor is actually pretty low, a shade lower than Isidis I think, and it's an area that has already been geologically characterised.

If you can land in Gale Crater, you can also land in the Valles Marineris. That could be a great area to study. However I'd be concerned, is there a chance of ongoing slides on the canyon walls?

A rockslide is probably a possibility- seeing one would be great scientifically- just make sure you're a distance away from it.

[KAL 9000]

Halfway between Olympus Mons and Valles Marineris. They're the two most interesting geological features on the planet, and there has to be some flat terrain there. If not there, then Acidia Planitia (because reasons! (AKA I want to meet Mark Watney))

[Spaceception]

On 12/2/2015, 4:26:06, cubinator said:

Acidalia Planitia...just cause... 

JK I would land somewhere with lots of riverbeds, or in the northern hemisphere where the ocean was. Those would be ideal places to look for evidence of ancient life. The best place would probably be the edge of a river delta as you get stuff carried from upstream and stuff from the ocean.

Agreed, just think of the science!!!!

[Findthepin1]

I was on Google Earth, Mars part. I assume you know how to get to Mars in Google Earth. You need to be viewing the CTX mosaic instead of the regular Mars globe in order to see the following stuff. There's polygon patterned ground at 45°54'5.56"N 17°51'26.91"E. The polygons here are usually over a hundred meters wide. There are what looks like glaciers everywhere surrounding that for miles. At 45°49'46.39"N 18°40'23.19"E there's a mesa with an obvious drainage basin with two major channels, and on the northwest corner of that same mesa is a crater that looks like it formed in mud. At 45°45'22.39"N 20°52'56.16"E there's more polygon ground, and it's more defined. You can clearly see it's patterned like that. At 46° 3'53.42"N 21°54'44.30"E there's a landform that looks like it was a lake. You can see an outflow channel at the north of it, that drains the basin into one of the main channels in the region. At 44° 2'44.28"N 46°17'19.83"E there's a mesa with a large crater, that was literally cut in half by what is probably moving ice. At 46°46'26.00"N 49°43'14.10"E is something, I'm not sure what but it looks like a geological boundary of some kind. I don't know what might have caused that, but it's between something that looks like it was/is viscously flowing and some underlying solid material. Lots of activity in this area, glaciers or otherwise, it's geologically significant. Look between any two mesas and you'll probably see signs of movement everywhere. I have yet to find a definite moraine. There are several candidates but they aren't obvious enough. You might want to check out the area around those coordinates. The easternmost glacier-like thing I've found in this continuous chain of them is at 31° 2'45.24"N 73°21'16.95"E and the westernmost is at 40°45'7.99"N 11°45'54.87"E. Also, I found a weird thing at 40°58'42.29"N 8°54'41.56"W, a straight ridge in a crater's ejecta field (another one that looks like it formed in mud). Can anyone tell me what this ridge is and how it formed?

Edited December 4, 2015 by Findthepin1

[cubinator]

Nilokeras Scopulus, at around 31.72°N 304.15°E. This location would allow for pretty good study of many geologic levels of a river's life. Besides, that cliff would be awesome to see every day.

Edit: What if we used planes instead of rovers to go back and forth across the steep, sandy hills?!?! Or we could invent the superconducting EM drive and have speeder races. Anyone want to help me invent the superconducting EM drive? 

Edited December 5, 2015 by cubinator

[RuBisCO]

On 12/4/2015, 5:11:33, Findthepin1 said:

I was on Google Earth, Mars part. I assume you know how to get to Mars in Google Earth. You need to be viewing the CTX mosaic instead of the regular Mars globe in order to see the following stuff. There's polygon patterned ground at 45°54'5.56"N 17°51'26.91"E. The polygons here are usually over a hundred meters wide. There are what looks like glaciers everywhere surrounding that for miles. At 45°49'46.39"N 18°40'23.19"E there's a mesa with an obvious drainage basin with two major channels, and on the northwest corner of that same mesa is a crater that looks like it formed in mud. At 45°45'22.39"N 20°52'56.16"E there's more polygon ground, and it's more defined. You can clearly see it's patterned like that. At 46° 3'53.42"N 21°54'44.30"E there's a landform that looks like it was a lake. You can see an outflow channel at the north of it, that drains the basin into one of the main channels in the region. At 44° 2'44.28"N 46°17'19.83"E there's a mesa with a large crater, that was literally cut in half by what is probably moving ice. At 46°46'26.00"N 49°43'14.10"E is something, I'm not sure what but it looks like a geological boundary of some kind. I don't know what might have caused that, but it's between something that looks like it was/is viscously flowing and some underlying solid material. Lots of activity in this area, glaciers or otherwise, it's geologically significant. Look between any two mesas and you'll probably see signs of movement everywhere. I have yet to find a definite moraine. There are several candidates but they aren't obvious enough. You might want to check out the area around those coordinates. The easternmost glacier-like thing I've found in this continuous chain of them is at 31° 2'45.24"N 73°21'16.95"E and the westernmost is at 40°45'7.99"N 11°45'54.87"E. Also, I found a weird thing at 40°58'42.29"N 8°54'41.56"W, a straight ridge in a crater's ejecta field (another one that looks like it formed in mud). Can anyone tell me what this ridge is and how it formed?

There are buried glaciers all over mars, according the SHARAD results and HiRISE imaging, but there is no published list of coordinates. Ideally we would want to land on a buried glacier as close to the equator as possible yet also at very low altitude. 

image from this article: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/04/09/4213143.htm

Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaciers_on_Mars

 

On 12/5/2015, 9:03:33, cubinator said:

Nilokeras Scopulus, at around 31.72°N 304.15°E. This location would allow for pretty good study of many geologic levels of a river's life. Besides, that cliff would be awesome to see every day.

Edit: What if we used planes instead of rovers to go back and forth across the steep, sandy hills?!?! Or we could invent the superconducting EM drive and have speeder races. Anyone want to help me invent the superconducting EM drive? 

Well the stall speed is going to be VERY high, a U2 spy plane can fly at mars mean surface altitude (earth equivalent altitude of ~19 km up), its stall speed at that altitude is 175-180 m/s, despite its HUGE glider wings. How do you land something like that going at ~400 mph I don't know. 

Edited December 6, 2015 by RuBisCO

[cubinator]

4 minutes ago, RuBisCO said:

Well the stall speed is going to be VERY high, a U2 spy plane can fly at mars mean surface altitude (earth equivalent altitude of ~19 km up), its stall speed at that altitude is 175-180 m/s, despite its HUGE glider wings. How do you land something like that going at ~400 mph I don't know. 

Well, it was just an idea  The only downside to that area is the hills, it could be hard for a rover to go up, it looks pretty sandy. 

[RuBisCO]

1 hour ago, cubinator said:

Well, it was just an idea  The only downside to that area is the hills, it could be hard for a rover to go up, it looks pretty sandy. 

Oh that should not be a problem, even Curiosity has very good sand dune performance (in earth bound testing), its simply a matter of having big enough wheels: wheel contact area to mass ratio.  

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, RuBisCO said:

Oh that should not be a problem, even Curiosity has very good sand dune performance (in earth bound testing), its simply a matter of having big enough wheels: wheel contact area to mass ratio.  

The hills in Nilokeras Scopulus are significantly worse than what Curiosity has had to deal with. They are often more than a kilometer long and get close to 30 degrees in places. I trust that we will have rovers big enough to drive the 20 kilometers or so up and down the hills, but still, it's a significant aspect of that region.

[Pronoes]

Wherever the closest point is when I get there that saves me the most fuel so I can get out of there when it inevitably goes sideways.

[HoloYolo]

I would YOLO it and choose a random/hard spot to land at.

[KAL 9000]

On December 5, 2015 at 8:03:33 AM, cubinator said:

Nilokeras Scopulus, at around 31.72°N 304.15°E. This location would allow for pretty good study of many geologic levels of a river's life. Besides, that cliff would be awesome to see every day.

Edit: What if we used planes instead of rovers to go back and forth across the steep, sandy hills?!?! Or we could invent the superconducting EM drive and have speeder races. Anyone want to help me invent the superconducting EM drive? 

I will! Me want speeders!

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, KAL 9000 said:

I will! Me want speeders!

Great! Now I'll be needing to a) find out what shape I need for the chamber, b ) make it out of yttrium beryllium copper oxide with chemical powders and a very hot furnace, c) make a sealed chamber for liquid nitrogen to flow through around the cavity, d) have some way to keep the liquid nitrogen cold while it's getting microwaved, e) a magnetron to shoot microwaves into the cavity, f) liquid nitrogen to cool it...

I think that's about it. Then we turn it on and hope that electromagnetic propulsion is actually a thing, as the results so far are rather controversial. I made a thread on this btw

[davidy12]

I could envision Ptolemaeus Crater as a potential landing spot. Maybe search for Mars 3.