Tool 03 · Terrain analysis

Landing Site Finder

Scores every possible landing point on a terrain model for three things at once: how safe the landing ellipse is, how much geological variety a rover could reach, and how uncertain that safety estimate is. The best sites are the ones that do well on all three, not just one.

Terrain

A synthetic 5.1 × 5.1 km Mars-like site at 20 m per pixel, with craters, a dry channel, a boulder field and a layered mound.

Lander limits

Maximum slope

Maximum roughness

Landing ellipse, semi-major axis

Rover traverse radius

Required safe fraction

Weights

Safety

Science value

Penalty for uncertainty

Sites below the required safe fraction are never ranked, whatever their science value.

Click anywhere on the map to score that spot.

Selected site

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Safety vs science

Low uncertaintyHigh uncertaintyPareto-optimal

Top candidate sites

Units are statistical terrain classes from k-means clustering on elevation, slope, roughness and brightness. They hint at geological variety; they are not a geologic map. Real elevation models: HiRISE DTMs, Mars Trek, Moon Trek and the PDS Geosciences Node. Export a heightmap as a grayscale PNG and enter its scale.