Possible MSL Traverse in Gale Crater

Gale Crater is one of the candidate landing sites for MSL. This video shows a notional traverse that MSL could take. One of the challenges of the Gale field area is an abundance of several meter high benches that would be difficult for the rover to get over. This traverse might avoid them, at least up to an area with both sulfates and clay minerals.

15 sec: old fan surface with different layers and some eolian dunes
20 sec: dark eolian dunes
25 sec: Ryan Anderson's "mound skirting unit" with ancient dune forms on the surface
30 sec: Contact between the mound skirting unit and lower mound strata
35 sec: Irregular weathering of probably sulfate-bearing strata
50 sec: Stratigraphic interval containing both sulfate and clay minerals, with some layering visible.
Then we get to the end of HiRISE data.

This video was produced by Christopher Haley and Dawn Sumner using a virtual globe program called Crusta, written by Tony Bernardin, all at KeckCAVES, UCDavis (http://keckcaves.org). The movie was captured using ScreenFlow and is shown in real time.

Images and DTMs: The context image is from the CTX camera and was compiled by Ralph Milliken. The lowest resolution topography is MOLA, and medium resolution DTM is from HRSC. The high resolution images are from HiRISE, and the high resolution DTMs are from HiRISE.

HiRISE and CTX credits, respectively: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona, NASA/JPL/MSSS;

HRSC - http://europlanet.dlr.de/node/index.php?id=380
HiRISE for Mawrth - http://www.uahirise.org/hiwish/view/23478
HiRISE DTMs - http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/dtm/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• mars
• gale
• crater
• msl