Why does NASA always land in craters on Mars?

Why does NASA always land in craters on Mars? This is a bit of a conspiracy to me. They say they are looking for signs of life but they keep landing in the one place any evidence of life would have been obliterated...in Asteroid impact craters. We need them to land in that deep trench. That is where water would have flowed and taken evidence of life into. If their were ancient seabed with creatures you would find it there. Follow the water.

Now we can discuss the Polar landers but one could argue there would not be life there either just like on earth. Are they even trying to find life?

Next Rover needs to land in Valles Marineris

a reply to: XevenBecause the craters act as a form of protection for the lander.

originally posted by: Vaedur
a reply to: XevenBecause the craters act as a form of protection for the lander.

Ok fine but next mission we should take a bit of risk and go somewhere that stuff might still exist in forms other than rock and dust from billions of years ago. Id think the trench might provide some protection along its walls. Might find remaining water frozen in there too?

I think the craters are nice and smooth.

Also, I'm pretty sure they do drive out of the crater and explore elsewhere, they don't just stay in the crater they land in, afaik.

a reply to: Xeven

This goes to my pet peeve (I keep it in an aquarium with lots of sunlight), that the world is sending one or two rovers at a time and calling it hotcakes. Why not dozens of Rovers? On Mars, on the solar system's moons, lots of them. I know that money is a consideration, but shouldn't be (someone gets the same money somewhere anyway, so why not people working in science and space exploration?).

Well how would it look if the pictures coming back were of martians playing golf on a golf course. To get impressive footage, there can't be grass and trees and martians having a pig roast. That wouldn't fit into our perception well.

originally posted by: Aleister
a reply to: Xeven

This goes to my pet peeve (I keep it in an aquarium with lots of sunlight), that the world is sending one or two rovers at a time and calling it hotcakes. Why not dozens of Rovers? On Mars, on the solar system's moons, lots of them. I know that money is a consideration, but shouldn't be (someone gets the same money somewhere anyway, so why not people working in science and space exploration?).

I agree. They just print more money anyway. Why not print more for humanities exploration of space. We could probably improve world relations if we partner with Russia, China and EU to build a couple human Solar system exploration vessels in orbit together (Thin Submarine in space). I am talking spacecraft that could spend decades or more out there using existing technology like Vasimr engines Nuclear Generators or maybe that Fusion Reactor Lockheed has worked out.

Also surprised people like Bill Gates and Warren buffet have not conspired together to build a moon or mars colony. That's one way to buy your name in the History books in a big way and they could do so without even denting their vast wealth.

And why does the lander does not have a small drone?

We can buy toy drones with camera's for years now.

Put one into a rover, fly around , film, and land back on the platform to recharge.

Heck, they are so cheap... put 20 small one in them and swarm around.
So they can find interesting routes, obstacles etc.

They even could be disposable.

Just my 2, but I believe they do it to get a better idea of the geology. An impact would dig deeper and give them a cross view.
Also, there would be "survivors" if there were any bacteria or other life in the meteorite.

a reply to: Xeven

First of all, your assertion that craters have no life in them, period, that meteor strikes exclusively destroy life and do nothing else, is bunk.

There is a pretty decent theory emerging, that the building blocks of life on this planet might have arrived here on the back of asteroid material, added to which, a crater is an environment which contains the greatest concentration of different materials for sampling purposes. Think about it.

When an asteroid strikes the surface of a planet, a great deal of material is blasted up, and out of the crater. But also, it lifts up the surface material to expose deeper sections of the crust of the planet. This means that in a crater, you have access to the material which was blasted up out of the hole in the first place, the material from the depth of the crust, AND the material deposited by the asteroid itself. Landing inside of them, means that all of those materials can be sampled early in the mission, rather than being left till later.

So in actual fact, for geological purposes a crater is incredibly important, and the geology of a planet, and learning about it, is vital information to gain, if ones task is to ascertain the potential for the presence of biological material.

Also, craters have compacted material at their bottoms, making for a predictable and stable landing site, not to mention one which is easily pinpointed by targeting systems on board the lander, as opposed to featureless, shifting dunes. These things, along with the fact that a crater is protected from freak gusts, and marginally less prone to the worst of any dust storms which kick up, make them ideal landing sites.

Now, you could argue that there are other sites which need looking over, and I would agree with you, but you cannot argue, based on the reasons you state, that craters are a bad landing site because they offer too little opportunity for scientific endeavour!

You really should check your information before making a claim of "Why does NASA always land in craters on Mars?", because the answer to that is: They have not.

Viking 1 landed on Chryse Planita, which is a plain and not a crater.

Viking 2 landed on Utopia Planitia, which is a plain and not a crater.

Pathfinder, the lander for the very first rover, landed on Ares Vallis, which again, is a plain, not a crater.

Opportunity landed on Meridiani Planum, which, once again, is not a crater, but is a plain.

Only Spirit and Curiosity landed in craters. Both craters are ancient and once held seas of water.

So out of just those 6 mission, only 2 were landed in craters.

Hardly "always" landing in craters.

a reply to: Aleister

Unfortunately not everyone sees the importance of science and exploration like we do

originally posted by: Xeven
Why does NASA always land in craters on Mars? This is a bit of a conspiracy to me. They say they are looking for signs of life but they keep landing in the one place any evidence of life would have been obliterated...in Asteroid impact craters. We need them to land in that deep trench. That is where water would have flowed and taken evidence of life into. If their were ancient seabed with creatures you would find it there. Follow the water.

Now we can discuss the Polar landers but one could argue there would not be life there either just like on earth. Are they even trying to find life?

Next Rover needs to land in Valles Marineris

It gives the lander the ability to explore soil samples at various depths without having to dig or drill. The entire side wall of the crator represents millions of years worth of sediment to explore.

a reply to: phantomjack

yeah probably better/older soil samples

a reply to: Xeven

That would depend how old the crater was

a reply to: Xeven

I think they are looking for life, just don't want anyone to know about it. If they do find life, they can say they found nothing in the crater until they want you to know about what they found...IF they want you to know. We are only shown what they want us to see and we won't find anything until they want us to.

I think they should simple carry a bunch of drones on the next landing. Once everything is settled down release all the drones and let them fly around, and drive around looking at everything. We could keep track of everyone of them from the mother lander. The drones would not have to be that big, they could be solar recharged and keep on going.

The atmosphere for a start. It's a lot thinner than on Earth.

Sandstorms, which would happily cause problems for rotors. Not to mention strong winds which would make automatic piloting a problem.

Power? how do you refuel them? are they going to run off nicads?

And if we ignore the automatic path finding, then we need to control them some how. and there is a bit of lag between here and earth... "Watch out for that mountain peak!" "Woops too late."

There are ideas in the works to have these things however, but it's not simple nor cheap, so the "We gots drones on urf, why nots the mars, like theyre cheap and you can have like 100 of them and we can see the marshuns!!" is a bit simplistic.

I guess the boffins at NASA are missing out on productive workers, if everyone else has the answer. Oh yeah, never a straight...

news.discovery.com...
en.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: eriktheawful
You really should check your information before making a claim of "Why does NASA always land in craters on Mars?", because the answer to that is: They have not.

Viking 1 landed on Chryse Planita, which is a plain and not a crater.

Viking 2 landed on Utopia Planitia, which is a plain and not a crater.

Pathfinder, the lander for the very first rover, landed on Ares Vallis, which again, is a plain, not a crater.

Opportunity landed on Meridiani Planum, which, once again, is not a crater, but is a plain.

Only Spirit and Curiosity landed in craters. Both craters are ancient and once held seas of water.

So out of just those 6 mission, only 2 were landed in craters.

Hardly "always" landing in craters.

Dang, beat me to it!
Thread over (or not, thanks to sn0rch's excellent links about martian aircraft)

a reply to: Xeven

Who gives a snip. It's a barren ball of rock. There's nothing we can learn from Mars that we can't learn on our own planet.