Mars 2003 Exploration Rovers Landing Site Recommendations

Dear Colleagues:

I’d like to bring you up to date on activities related to landing sites for
the Mars 2003 Exploration Rovers. The Athena Science Team met shortly after
the 4th Landing Site Workshop and made recommendations on favored sites
from the science perspective. A memo from the Athena PI, Steve Squyres,
detailing the recommendations is attached. You will find that the Science
Team recommendations are very consistent with those made by the broader
science community via the series of open landing site workshops.

Note that these are recommendations only and are based solely upon science
considerations. They involve consideration of site science characteristics,
objectives of the Athena investigation, the capabilities of the Athena
payload and the MER rovers, and other factors that impact science return
(e.g. mission lifetime).

The Science Team recommendations do not address safety considerations.
Safety will be dealt with separately by the MER Project at JPL and the
final Project recommendation to NASA Headquarters will be based on both
science and safety considerations. In addition, the science, safety, and
landing site characterization/selection process will go through a Peer
Review in late March.

Landing site selection will be made by the Associate Administrator for
Space Science at NASA Headquarters in April.

Regards

John Grant

John Grant

Center for Earth and Planetary Studies

National Air and Space Museum

Smithsonian Institution

Independence Avenue at 6th Street SW

Washington, DC 20560-0315

202-357-1494 (Voice)

202-786-2566 (Fax)

Cornell University

Department of Astronomy

January 24, 2003

To: Distribution

From: Steve Squyres

On January 22, 2003, the Athena Science Team met at JPL to discuss the issue of landing site selection for MER. The purpose of this discussion was to arrive at our final recommendations to the MER Project regarding landing sites. This memo documents those recommendations.

Our recommendations are based on science considerations only. They take into account the scientific characteristics of the sites, the objectives of the Athena investigation, the capabilities of the Athena payload and the MER rovers, and other factors like mission lifetime that impact science return.

Our recommendations do not address safety considerations. We assume that safety will be dealt with separately, and that the final Project recommendation to NASA Headquarters will take both science and safety into account.

Our discussion was influenced very strongly by the inputs provided to us by the broad Mars science community via a series of open workshops. We thank the community, and especially the Landing Site Steering Committee chaired by John Grant and Matt Golombek, for those inputs. We believe that our recommendations are wholly consistent with the community consensus that the workshops established.

Our recommendations are as follows:

• By near-unanimous consensus, our team recommends that the two MER landing sites be Meridiani Planum and Gusev Crater.
• If safety issues were to eliminate both Gusev Crater and Isidis Planitia from consideration, our near-unanimous consensus is that the two sites should be Meridiani Planum and Elysium Planitia, rather than sending both vehicles to Meridiani.
• If a launch accident or other events were to make it necessary to choose a single landing site, the team preference, by a 2:1 margin, is for Meridiani Planum rather than Gusev Crater.

The scientific rationale for these recommendations will be documented in detail in materials that we will help prepare in support of the remainder of the landing site selection process.