Finding a Landing Place

Today members from the Mars science community met to decide landing spots for the Mars Science Laboratoy this will be sent to Mars in 2009. They do this by looking at over 125 pictures that the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars has sent back to them. One of the objectives for the CRISM was to find and investigate areas that were wet long enough to leave minerals behind. This picture taking part of the Reconnaissance Orbiter has the capability to map spectral variations of over 544 colors. It has mapped over half the planet in low-resolution mode since November 2006. It has also taken 2,500 hihg-resolution oberservations and almost 3,000 atmopheric observations.