Gale Crater HiRISE DEM Animation
Courtesy of the USGS DEM generating guru’s, a few more HiRISE derived DEM’s have started making it onto their page. (see my story on animating the Columbia Hills for more info)
As part of the MSL landing site selection process, several new DEM’s have been published. These are huge files ( 2gig+ usually) but several of the new ones are giving be a bit of download trouble. One of the ones that has downloaded happily, is this one. Fortunately, it’s my favourite candidate landing site. Gale Crater would be a ‘drive to’ landing site. The safe landing ellipse contains the terrain seen in this DEM, and is interesting itself (it is thought to be a delta of some sort). In the middle of Gale Crater is a large mound, the start of which can be seen beyond the dark dunes at one end of this DEM.
