A dossier is a stack of evidence about a place. It is not a grade. This page holds six places a designer already meets elsewhere on the sheet: two rover craters, the deep basin, the high volcanic ground, a mid-latitude ice plain, and one equatorial lowland that was chosen because a solar lander could set down there.

Bradbury Landing in Gale is 4.5895 S, 137.4417 E, at -4501 m. [1] The InSight lander in Elysium Planitia is 4.502 N, 135.623 E, at -2613.43 m. [2] Jezero, Hellas, the Tharsis summits, and Arcadia do not get an elevation on this sheet, so they do not get a pressure.

The table

Where an elevation is stored, pressure is the same screen as Pressure and the areoid: datum pressure times exp(-z / 11 km), z positive upward. Hellas is more than 7 km below the areoid, and the 7 km button on that page is a round screen, not the basin floor. The 22 km Olympus figure is a round screen, not a surveyed summit. JPL's 2024 graph caption says Jezero sits about 2,600 m below the reference level. That is a crater-scale remark, not the rover's landing point, so it is not in the elevation column. [4]

Arcadia is here because the SWIM maps find that its plains, with Deuteronilus Mensae, match the greatest number of remote-sensing criteria for accessible ice equatorward of the present stability zone. [3] That is an evidence statement. It is not a volume, and it is not a choice of city. Dust, slopes, and bearing are not assessed unless the cell says otherwise. Planetary protection is a constraint from NASA and COSPAR. This table does not assign a category. [5]

Class B where elevation is stored

Screening sheet. Not for flight, medicine, or operations. No row is a winner.

Six dossiers. The buttons reorder rows. Order is not a ranking.
Gale, Bradbury Landing4.5895 S, 137.4417 E. Equatorial crater floor. The point is the 2012 landing, not the mountain.-4501 m957.6 Pa (9.58 mbar)Ancient lake mudstone. Ice evidence: none cited as a reserve.not assessedCuriosity, 6 August 2012. Still operating on this sheet.Layered mound. The Gale article holds the science.not assessedNASA and COSPAR rules apply. This row assigns no category.
Jezero craterAbout 18.4 N, 77.5 E, as the Jezero article states. Landing elevation is not stored.Not storedNot computedFossil delta and lake deposits. Ice evidence: none cited for the landing area.not assessedPerseverance, 18 February 2021.Sample cache, including Sapphire Canyon. The tubes were still on Mars.not assessedNASA and COSPAR rules apply. This row assigns no category.
Hellas PlanitiaSouthern basin. The floor is more than 7 km below the areoid. A surveyed floor is not stored.Not storedNot computedIce evidence: none cited as a class for the floor on this row.not assessedNo landed mission on this row.Deepest regional basin on the geography pages.not assessedNASA and COSPAR rules apply. This row assigns no category.
Tharsis summit regionEquatorial volcanic rise. The 22 km Olympus figure is a round screen, not a surveyed summit.Not storedNot computedIce evidence: none cited for the summits.not assessedNo landed mission on the summits. The air column there is the short one.Volcanic province. See Tharsis and Olympus Mons.not assessedNASA and COSPAR rules apply. This row assigns no category.
Arcadia PlanitiaNorthern mid-latitude plains. No single landing elevation is stored.Not storedNot computedRadar, geomorphic, neutron, and thermal datasets agree with buried ice more often here than on many other northern plains. Consistency is not a volume.not assessedNo landed mission on this row.Mid-latitude ice evidence. See the subsurface ice page.not assessedNASA and COSPAR rules apply. This row assigns no category.
Elysium Planitia, InSight4.502 N, 135.623 E. Equatorial lowland, chosen because it was flat, low, and near the equator.-2613.43 m806.6 Pa (8.07 mbar)Ice evidence: none cited at the lander.Dust on the solar panels ended the mission in December 2022. A regional dust climatology is not assessed.InSight, 26 November 2018.Interior geophysics. Not a layered-sediment target.Orbit looked smooth and lightly rocky. Bearing strength is not assessed.NASA and COSPAR rules apply. This row assigns no category.

Pressure is the datum pressure times exp(-z / H). A blank elevation is not zero. The 7 km and 22 km screens stay on the pressure page because they are not a surveyed Hellas floor or a surveyed Olympus summit.

How not to read a sort

The column buttons reorder the rows. A shorter pressure, a lower elevation, or a name that sorts first is not a recommendation. Subsurface ice is the ice vocabulary. Perchlorates is the oxidant. Mission instruments is which flight measured a stored number.

See also

References

  1. Vasavada et al. Overview of the Mars Science Laboratory mission: Bradbury Landing to Yellowknife Bay and beyond. JGR Planets, 2014. Touchdown at 4.5895 S, 137.4417 E, -4501 m. https://doi.org/10.1002/2014JE004622
  2. Golombek et al. Geology of the InSight landing site on Mars. Nature Communications, 2020. Lander at 4.502 N, 135.623 E, -2613.43 m on the MOLA geoid. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14679-1
  3. Morgan et al. Availability of subsurface water-ice resources in the northern mid-latitudes of Mars. Nature Astronomy, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-020-01290-z
  4. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Jezero crater elevation graph, 12 December 2024. Crater about 2,600 m below the reference level. Not used here as a landing elevation. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia26476-jezero-crater-elevation-graph/
  5. NASA Office of Safety and Mission Assurance. Planetary protection. https://sma.nasa.gov/sma-disciplines/planetary-protection

Categories

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