NASA Spaceship Scouts Out Prime Mars Landing Spots

coondoggie writes "NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter this week sent back high-resolution images of about 30 proposed landing sites for the Mars Science Laboratory, a mission launching in 2009 to deploy a long-distance rover carrying sophisticated science instruments on Mars. The orbiter's high-resolution camera has taken more than 3,500 huge, sharp images released in black-and-white since it began science operations in November 2006. The images show features as small as a desk. The orbiter has sent back some 26 terabytes of data, equivalent to about 5,000 CD-ROMs."

We did use robots to scout landing sites

[tjstork]

NASA sent a boatload of probes to the moon. There was both the Ranger and Surveyor missions. They not only photographed the lunar surface, but they also tested the soil composition to see if it was ok for people to walk on.

In fact, on of the lunar missions, Apollo 12, actually touched down next to the Surveyor mission designed to scout for it. I think they actually retrieved some pieces from the Surveyor probe, to see how it held up after being so long on the lunar surface.

Re:5,000 CD-ROMs?

[jackharrer]

It's also equivalent to Olympic-sized swimming pool full of zeroes and ones. Just to precise.

Read amusing article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/24/vulture_central_standards/ [theregister.co.uk]

We used Apollo missions to scout for landing sites

[Guysmiley777]

We used the early Apollo flights (as in some of the ones BEFORE Apollo 11) to take photographs of the Moon looking for landing sites. They had already picked out candidates, but the in-orbit photos were of much better resolution than from an Earth based telescope.

Re:Something I don't understand

[DerekLyons]

Why do we need Terabytes of information about landing sites about Mars but all it took was a telescope to pick a landing site on the moon?

A telescope doesn't have the resolution to study potential landing zones/site - even at lunar ranges. Additionally, they want to be careful with the landing areas for this probe due to it's size and weight.
 
 

Maybe it's a distance thing and maybe there are just more difficulties with a Mars mission that I just don't understand or was there a few fly by missions to the moon I'm not remembering...

The Lunar Orbiter [wikipedia.org] program put five photosats in orbit around the moon in 1966 and 67 for the purpose of studying the lunar surface with an emphasis on photographing potential landing sites. Even so, one of the main missions of the CSM pilot was conducting additional photographic studies from orbit while the rest of the crew was on the surface.
 
There were actually three series of precursor missions to the moon in advance of the landings, the Ranger [wikipedia.org] series of hard landers, the Lunar Orbiter series of photosats, and the Surveyor [wikipedia.org] series of soft landers. None of them get a great deal of press nowadays, but without them the manned missions would have been much more difficult and much more dangerous.