Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems addresses a Schwartz Auditorium audience Oct. 13. Charles Harrington/University Photography
The south polar landing site for the Mars Polar Lander, which is expected to touch down on the red planet Dec. 3, has a surface "unlike anything I've seen on Earth," according to Michael Malin, a world-renowned geomorphologist and Mars expert.
Speaking at Cornell recently, Malin, whose company designed and built the camera for the currently orbiting Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, described the landing area as consisting of layered deposits with surfaces that are "extremely unusual."
Malin is principal investigator on the downward-looking camera, the Mars Descent Imager, on the Polar Lander. Cornell astronomers Joseph Veverka, Steven Squyres and Peter Thomas are co-investigators on the descent imager.
The Polar Lander site, announced by NASA on Aug. 25, is a region near the northern edge of the Martian south pole's layered terrain. The purpose of the mission is to study the layers of ice and dust covering the polar region. According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Mars Polar Lander is 18.8 million kilometers (11.7 million miles) from Mars, approaching the planet at a speed of 4.8 kilometers per second (10,740 miles per hour) relative to the planet.
Malin described the south polar region as a "Swiss cheese terrain" with numerous "round patterns" covering its carbon dioxide ice cap. "We have no idea what's going on here. It's a complete mystery," he said of the area's geological evolution. "In all places, what we are seeing is a surface stripped of material," he said. Such surfaces tend to vary between high, flat formations with steep slopes leading to bottom layers covered with residual materials. "If we land on the top surface, it will be relatively smooth with small depressions. If we land on the bottom (surface), we will see little clifflets a couple of hundred meters across and tens of meters high, with probably some small cracks and channels."
The horizon, he predicted, will be totally flat, without any hills or elevations. By comparison, the Mars Pathfinder, which touched down in 1997, sent back pictures of a skyline dotted with hills.
Malin's company, Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, built and operates the Mars Observer Camera (MOC) aboard the Global Surveyor spacecraft, which was launched in 1996.
The MOC, the highest-resolution camera ever sent to Mars, has taken views of the Polar Lander site at resolutions approaching a few yards. Currently, the camera is sending back 200 pictures every third day and 50 the other two days. However, it is entering a low-data-rate period when the images will drop to only 40 to 50 on a good day and 10 on a normal day, Malin said. Although the spacecraft is scheduled to have a working life of only another 13 months, Malin expressed his hope that it would remain active beyond its normal lifetime in order to continue sending back pictures for landing missions as far out as 2005.
Malin's previous NASA research includes photogeological studies by the Mars Viking orbiter and lander, the Voyager spacecraft imaging of satellites of Jupiter and Saturn and the Pioneer spacecraft images of Venus.
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