What Makes a Good Landing Site on Mars?
It depends on what you’re sending there.
Three years from now, NASA will launch another rover to Mars, where it will scour the surface for traces of ancient life, signs that the planet may have once been habitable. Around the same time, if Elon Musk meets his deadline, SpaceX will send the first commercial spacecraft to land on the planet. About a decade later, humans might arrive, ready to open a new chapter in human history.
But where are we going, exactly, when we say we’re going to Mars?
Scientists and engineers can spend years poring over images and other data to determine the best landing
