Probe's powerful camera spots Vikings on Mars

Probe's powerful camera spots Vikings on Mars
http://space.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn10727&feedId=online-news_rss20
It is a feat millions of times more impressive than finding a needle in a haystack. The new Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted about a dozen spacecraft on the Martian surface and, incredibly, taken pictures of such sharpness that scientists have been able to identify individual rocks that were first photographed by the Viking landers in 1976.

The new series of pictures released late on Monday show both of the Viking landers, never spotted from orbit before, as well as their nearby heat shields and backshells. These are the top and bottom covers of the capsules in which the rovers decended through the Martian atmosphere to land.

The MRO has also found the Mars rover Spirit , the pyramid-shaped structure in which it landed, its backshell and parachute. The satellite probe had already found the rover Opportunity and its landing structure, sending back images within its first week of operations in October 2006.

Picturing the Viking landers from orbit is quite a coup for MRO. Tim Parker, a planetary geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, told New Scientist that it was possible to clearly identify them by analysing the Martian landscape, even though the images show little detail.

Parker carefully matched rocks and other topographic features seen in the orbital views with those seen images the landers took on the ground. "I found a much better location match" than had been made from earlier orbital pictures, he says. It turns out Viking 1 is about 6 kilometres (3.8 miles) away from the spot identified as the landing site during the Viking mission.
"Ground truth"

Even individual boulders, just a metre across, seen by the Viking landers can be identified in the new images, Parker says. "The biggest surprise is that you can still see what appears to be the parachute [of a Viking lander] after 30 years," Parker says. Such observations could help scientists determine the rate at which dust accumulates on the surface.

The complete series of MRO images help future Mars landings avoid potentially dangerous rocky outcrops. The Phoenix mission, scheduled for 2007, will be the first to benefit from the new topographical information.

By comparing the rockiness of the surface seen with MRO's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera with the views already seen from the ground, the Phoenix team will be able to make a much better assessment of which regions will be safe enough to land on.

This calibration will in turn allow the team to interpret images from other regions on Mars more accurately, Alfred McEwen, leader of the HiRISE camera team, told New Scientist.

Earlier MRO images showed the landing site originally picked for Phoenix was too dangerous. But with the help of the new matches between the orbital and ground-level views, the team has now found "some regions that should provide safe landing sites" while still being geologically and biologically interesting, Parker says.

Ironically, McEwen says, the new MRO images show the area where Viking 2 came down is so rocky that "they wouldn't let us land there now". The new images of Spirit are already being put to use by its team to plan that rover's next movements.
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