Downselection of Landing Sites Proposed for the Mars 2020 Rover Mission
47th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (2016) 2324.pdf DOWNSELECTION OF LANDING SITES PROPOSED FOR THE MARS 2020 ROVER MISSION. M. P. Golombek1, J. A. Grant2, K. A. Farley3, K. Williford1, A. Chen1, R. E. Otero1, and J. W. Ashley1, 1Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109; 2Smithsonian Institution, Center for Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington, D.C. 20560, 3Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125. Introduction: The Mars 2020 mission would ex- suitable for addressing key planetary evolution ques- plore a site likely to have been habitable, seek signs of tions if and when they are returned to Earth. past life, prepare a returnable cache with the most Results of the voting were presented as the compelling samples, take the first steps towards in-situ weighted average (assigning 5 points to each green resource utilization on Mars, and demonstrate technol- vote, 3 to each yellow vote, and 1 to each red vote that ogy needed for future human and robotic exploration were then summed and divided by the total number of of Mars. The first landing site workshop identified and votes) and the mode (color receiving the most votes). prioritized 27 landing sites proposed by the science This ensured that participants could not skew the re- community according to science objectives that also sults by withholding votes from some sites. Both met the engineering constraints [1]. This abstract de- methods yield similar results and reveal a fall-off in scribes the downselection of landing sites that occurred support for sites ranked lower than the top nine or ten at the second landing site workshop and associated based on mode and average, respectively [2].
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