7SELECTING MARTIAN LANDING SITES
Landing a spacecraft on Mars is extraordinarily difficult and fraught with peril. No one wants to lose a billion-dollar probe, so engineers must emphasize operational safety. They may spend years searching satellite images for the safest landing sites that satisfy mission objectives. And they have a lot of ground to cover. Mars has almost the same amount of dry land as Earth!
Analyzing an area this large requires the help of computers. In this chapter, you’ll use Python and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s pride and joy, the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) map, to choose and rank candidate landing sites for ...
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