The ideal landing spot will have a 200-foot radius and will be totally flat, located within the Jezero crater, and close enough to where Perseverance is exploring to be able to pick up the samples the rover has deposited. The area needs to be not only flat as in lacking hills, but also lacking in large boulders or sand dunes, both of which can cause problems for a landing vehicle.
The team is able to get an idea of potential locations by looking at data taken by Mars orbiters, which can take images of the planet’s surface at impressively high resolutions given how far away they are. But to really see the terrain up close and in detail, the team needs a closer view which they can get from the cameras on Perseverance. The rover has been scouting out areas that the team had flagged as potential landing sites — nicknamed landing strips due to their long straight shapes — and sending this data back to Earth.
“We had been eyeing these locations since before Perseverance’s landing, but imagery from orbit can only tell you so much,” said JPL’s Mars Sample Return Systems Engineering & Integration manager, Al Chen. “Now we have some up-close-and-personal shots of the landing strip that indicate we were right on the money. The landing strip will more than likely make our shortlist of potential landing and caching sites for MSR.”
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