Constraints, Approach and Present Status for Selecting the Mars Surveyor 2001 Landing Site

There are many similarities between the Mars Surveyor 01 (MS 01) landing site selection process and that of Mars Pathfinder. The selection process includes two parallel activities in which engineers define and refine the capabilities of the spacecraft through design, testing and modeling and scientists define a set of landing site constraints based on the spacecraft design and landing scenario. As for Pathfinder, the safety of the site is without question the single most important factor, for the simple reason that failure to land safely ...