Minutes of the Mars Landing Site Steering Committee Meeting

March 28^th, 2002

Convened at 6:30 p.m.

BJ’s Pub and Brewery, Arcadia, California

Compiled by J. Grant

All Steering Committee members in attendance except Ken Tanaka, Phil Christensen, Jack Farmer, and Mike Malin

Also in attendance: Steve Squyres, Ray Arvidson, Mark Adler, Joy Crisp, Cathy Weitz, and Pete Theisinger

The Steering Committee meeting focused on discussion of the results of the 3^rd MER Landing Site Workshop completed earlier in the day.

The Steering Committee unanimously endorsed the outcomes of the workshop that included the conclusions of the relative science, safety, and public engagement merits of the primary and back-up sites (summary table attached separately). In addition, the Steering Committee supported the conclusion that the Melas and Eos Chasma sites be dropped from further consideration as possible landing sites for the MER rovers. This regrettable decision is based on the probable occurrence of high winds, slopes, and rocks (at Eos) in the proposed ellipses. Pending the results of wind modeling, the possibility of moving theidentifying a new ellipse futher in Isidis Basin ellipse farther into the basin or moving the present ellipse (to avoid high winds and rock abundances) was also endorsed. The Steering Committee also supported maintaining the Athabasca site as a possible back-up site and agreed that members of the MER Project and Science science Team team would work with Alfred McEwen to try and understand the source of enigmatic radar signatures in the vicinity of the landing site and try and place the landing ellipse to avoid associated surfaces. Ray Arvidson, Albert Haldemann, and Tim Parker volunteered to assist in this activity.

The Steering Committee agreed that the landing site selection process has been successful to date, but that the next workshop should include more focused presentations on the safety and science potential of the sites as related to the specific MER mission objectives and rover capabilities. Recommendations included focusing on specific testable hypotheses that could be addressed at a site during the MER mission and incorporation incorporating of more refined inter-site discriminators with increased dynamic range. Finally, the Steering Committee recognized the need toendorsed includinge Science Team and Committee members in the evaluation and presentation of the remaining sites. Ray Arvidson and group will continue to work on the Hematite site, whereas Mike Carr and George McGill volunteered to assist on the Gusev and Isidis sites, respectively.

The Steering Committee unanimously endorsed the Project plan to identify possible additional “safe” landing sites in the face of recent mesoscale wind model results. Such sites might also accommodate new discoveries enabled by the Odyssey mission and THEMIS data in particular. However, the need to evaluate the possible degradation in mission science associated with landing at a “safe” site was also acknowledged.

The Committee recognized the spectacular nature of the THEMIS data and thanks Phil Christensen and Team for generously sharing the data during presentations at the workshop. The value of the THEMIS data in assisting in MER landing site evaluations is clearly appreciated: Matt Golombek will explore possible additional means of access to the data.

The last business item focused on planning upcoming Steering Committee and site selection activities. The Project will focus on determining what wind (vertical and shear) constraints need to be imposed as well as whether modifications to the acceptable range in landing site elevation and latitude can be made. It is expected that these decisions will be made by late April 2002. New sites that meet any new criteria would then be solicited from the science community through May 2002. Evaluations of existing and any new sites would continue during the summer and would be followed by an assessment by the Landing Site Steering Committee and Athena Science Team in the early fall 2002 (likely September). Phil Christensen has agreed that this meeting can be held at ASU (dates TBD) in order to enable “real time” review of THEMIS data for the sites. Finally, an open community workshop will be held in the early part of 2003 to evaluate all of the remaining sites.