Landing Site Requirements EE XX OO MM AA RR SS

Final landing site workshop to take place on 8–9 Nov 2018, in Leicester (UK)

Credit: ESA/Medialab 1 What the Rules of the Road Say EE XX OO MM AA RR SS

What the LSSWG is asked to do: - Recommend a and backup landing sites taking into account that we need to achieve the mission’s science objectives, and that without safe landing and rover egress there is no science for either rover or surface platform.

In case the above is not clear: 1. Safe landing and rover egress are paramount; 2. A site that preserves possible biosignatures that we can search with the rover’s drill is paramount. - 1 is not more important than 2, and 2 is not more important than 1. - The mission succeeds if we achieve 1 AND 2.

2 Candidate Landing Sites EE XX OO MM AA RR SS

Candidate landing sites:

capping unit 0 m ~10 m ~3.7 Ga water table lowers, ~3.8 Ga cations ~50 m precipitate mineralised as sulphates fractures

Fe/Mg smectite unit

~200 m ~4.0 Ga or more

?

Oldest terrains to be targeted

3 Credit: THEMIS/MOLA/Peter Grindrod Candidate Landing Sites EE XX OO MM AA RR SS

Start of conditions Surface conditions compatible with life become less habitable 4.1 3.7 Pre- Noachian Clays Oxia Planum

Clays Mawrth Vallis

Early heavy Late heavy bombardment bombardment

EARTH Hadean Archaean Ga 4.568 4.4 3.9 3.5

Beginning of terrestrial Oldest preserved planetary accretion traces of life

4 , MEX / HRSC Reference Surface Mission EE XX OO MM AA RR SS

The rover reference surface mission includes: 2 a) EXIT LANDING AREA: 1 Get away from any rocket organic contamination before 3 avg. opening the analytical laboratory to the environment. 500 m b) BLANK ANALYSIS RUNS: 0 Science Locations 4 Demonstrate that the rover’s sample pathway is free from organic contamination. c) 6 EXPERIMENT CYCLES: 5 Combined surface and subsurface exploration.

6 surface and 6 subsurface samples. Assumed Rover position at the beginning of an EC: 6 d) 2 VERTICAL SURVEYS: At one location, collect and analyse samples 20 m at depths of 0, 50, 100, 150, and 200-cm. 20 m 10 additional subsurface samples.

Rover is at a distance d = 20 m from the intended exploration location.

The quality of the landing site is fundamental for achieving the mission’s science objectives.

5 tracks, MRO / HiRISE