After that time, the south polar region was not accessible to the camera until June 1999, when the south polar winter was ending and the sun began to dawn on this region once again. Since the beginning of June 1999, an intense period of imaging has been conducted over the landing zone so that a safe site could be found. The final site has now been identified, and the pictures shown here give some idea of what the Mars Polar Lander will encounter a little more than three months from now. The thin white boxes and lines crossing the proposed zone outline MOC images taken between the first week in June 1999 and the first week in August 1999.
Smaller swaths represent images at higher resolution.
The selection criteria were to find a place that was relatively flat and relatively smooth, but which displayed characteristics of the south polar layered materials. The base map used here is a mosaic of Viking Orbiter images from the U.S. Geological Survey. The south polar layered deposits are generally devoid of the large craters and hills seen at the Pathfinder site. When the picture on the right was taken, the surface was still mostly covered by winter-time carbon dioxide frost. Illumination is from the lower right in both pictures.