Landing in Oxia Planum
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona
Landing in Oxia Planum
ESP_060015_1980  Science Theme: Future Exploration/Landing Sites
This image shows a cratered area to the southeast of the ExoMars 2020 Rosalind Franklin rover landing site at Oxia Planum.

Selecting and characterizing landing sites is a balance between having science targets and avoiding potential obstacles, and HiRISE is used for both purposes.

Craters like this one excavate material from within the crust, including both sedimentary and igneous rocks, and scatter this material far from the crater itself. This is one of the ways that so-called “float rocks” (rocks that are not connected to their original outcrop) can occur across a landing site: they are often ejecta from distant impacts.

Here, an ejecta blanket is visible in the rays of material surrounding this 2-kilometer diameter crater. The ExoMars rover has a suite of cameras and a close-up imager (called CLUPI) that will be used to study these float rocks. Studying such samples has been an important way of learning about the deep crust of Mars on previous missions, notably the Spirit and Opportunity rovers and now, Curiosity.



Written by: John Bridges (audio: Tre Gibbs)  (10 June 2019)
 
Acquisition date
16 May 2019

Local Mars time
14:25

Latitude (centered)
17.731°

Longitude (East)
336.461°

Spacecraft altitude
281.4 km (174.9 miles)

Original image scale range
28.3 cm/pixel (with 1 x 1 binning) so objects ~85 cm across are resolved

Map projected scale
25 cm/pixel and North is up

Map projection
Equirectangular

Emission angle
5.9°

Phase angle
41.8°

Solar incidence angle
36°, with the Sun about 54° above the horizon

Solar longitude
26.1°, Northern Spring

For non-map projected images
North azimuth:  97°
Sub-solar azimuth:  0.4°
JPEG
Black and white
map projected  non-map

IRB color
map projected  non-map

Merged IRB
map projected

Merged RGB
map projected

RGB color
non-map projected

JP2
Black and white
map-projected   (699MB)

IRB color
map-projected   (405MB)

JP2 EXTRAS
Black and white
map-projected  (313MB)
non-map           (367MB)

IRB color
map projected  (118MB)
non-map           (342MB)

Merged IRB
map projected  (190MB)

Merged RGB
map-projected  (184MB)

RGB color
non map           (359MB)
BONUS
4K (TIFF)
8K (TIFF)
10K (TIFF)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
B&W label
Color label
Merged IRB label
Merged RGB label
EDR products
HiView

NB
IRB: infrared-red-blue
RGB: red-green-blue
About color products (PDF)

Black & white is 5 km across; enhanced color about 1 km
For scale, use JPEG/JP2 black & white map-projected images

USAGE POLICY
All of the images produced by HiRISE and accessible on this site are within the public domain: there are no restrictions on their usage by anyone in the public, including news or science organizations. We do ask for a credit line where possible:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

POSTSCRIPT
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The HiRISE camera was built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corporation and is operated by the University of Arizona.