As the rover's spacecraft descends through the Martian atmosphere in 2003, it will take descent images of the landing site. These high resolution images will allow the scientists to plan traverses for the rover to find interesting targets to study.
This kind of information has been simulated for the FIDO field tests using satellite orbital images of the Earth. A helicopter has also flown over the test site to provide high resolution descent images similar to the descent images expected from Mars in 2003 and 2005. Below are examples of the images for the FIDO field tests.
1. Orbital Image |
2. Upper Descent Image |
3. Middle Descent Image |
4. Lower Descent Image |