Renewed search for Mars Polar Lander
Artist's rendition of Mars Polar Lander in 3-D
The Unmanned Spaceflight forums have a long discussion on the previous search efforts. Many candidates were proposed, and the community’s discussion about them is quite enlightening.
Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society also started a coordinated search effort last year. I don’t know if that effort is still ongoing, but her page on how to use HiRISE images in the search is still a great resource. It includes examples of known hardware, cosmic ray hits and other artifacts, and more tips on searching.
In addition to the list of images on the previous blog entry, these new images have been released: (we’ll try to keep this list up to date as more are released)
- ESP_013368_1035
- ESP_013078_1030
- ESP_013223_1025
- ESP_013289_1035
- ESP_013566_1025
- ESP_013500_1035
- ESP_013711_1030
- ESP_013724_1030
- ESP_013935_1030
- ESP_013790_1035
- ESP_014001_1040
- ESP_014080_1040
Thanks for all your interest, and good luck searching!
9/2/09: ETA new images released in September PDS release.
August 11th, 2009 at 1:23 am
Hi there.
I posted on a linked blog page yesterday yet find that my input doesn’t exist any longer – so I am trying again.
I found an interesting feature on the initial image that downloads with the viewer.
I was hoping someone might verify if its a viable target or not.
Thanks.
Keir
August 21st, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Hi Keir,
If you can use the viewer blow up suspect feature & then crop & save it as JPG or PNG, & then email it to me @
andrew.brown1969@btinternet.com
I’ll have a look & get back to you with my opinion.
It is wonderful news tha this search is being renewed. Hopefully MPL with the parachute, etc will be found, but also this is great science being accomplished here with extnede HiRISE observations of this region on Mars, that lets face it is not that well known.
It would be good to find out what happened to MPL though.
I still say that another lander, perhaps like Phoenix or an airbag landing system static one like Mars Pathfinder be sent to the MPL landing site.
Andrew Brown.
September 4th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Hooray for new images! Now that I’m back at work I’ll be happy to carry on organizing the search. I’ve added all the ESP and PSP images over the site to my web page. Just shoot me an email to tell me which image you’re searching and I’ll keep count on that page — that way we can make sure the search effort is evenly spread.
September 6th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Hi guys
I found a twin spot that caught my attention in image PSP_002846_1040. How can I send you the annotated image?
Clear skies
Lonnie
September 11th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Hi Lonnie & other readers,
If you want to suggest a candidate, you can give us the line, sample of the pixels in a specific filename so we know what area you’re talking about. You could also post an image somewhere & link to it from a comment here.
The Unmanned Spaceflight Forums are usually a good place to get some feedback on your candidates. Here’s a link to the latest page of the relevant thread.
Also, to participate in a more organized effort than we have the resources to put together, contact Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society. She’s keeping track of volunteers that are searching each image, and is taking candidates for review. Here’s a link to her post.
October 24th, 2009 at 8:26 am
in the file PSP_005391_1030 we can see one impact a little black crater behind left a volcanic crater(yellow brown upper right of the photo), behind this impact in the middle end of the photo we can see most grey brown pixel the may sonde with parachute(black pixels)
I may be wrong i m sure of 70% in target area in axe 77.1°/165.4° XP