Landers on Mars

[Barquentine]

Does anyone know if it's possible to see Viking, Phoenix or other landers on Mars from Earth telescopes or from Hubble? Or maybe orbiting craft currenlty there can spot them? Also - can the remains of the Apollo Moon missions be seen via Hubble/orbiters?

[jake-the-peg]

The possibility of seeing the Moon Landers was discussed a while ago here:

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Science/Questio n768601.html

I estimated that you'd need a telescope greated than 50 meters across to do so.

Since The moon is a mere quarter of a million miles away where as Mars is, as I recall at least 50 million I think it's pretty unlikely.

As for seeing them from Mars orbit. The Mars Global surveyer has a resolution of 5.9 meters to a pixel so no I think you're out of luck there too!

[Barquentine]

I just discovered that they can see the Viking 1 craft - just a tiny dot photographed from an orbiter as part of the High Resolution Imaging Science Project by Tuscon University.

[jake-the-peg]

Viking would be about a single pixel at that scale.

However I'd like to know how they're sure that one particular pixel is the lander!

[Teddio]

On a photo taken by one of the Voyager probes beyond the orbit of Jupiter, Earth appeared as a single pixel. Carl Sagan found this very sobering.

[Barquentine]

JTP, I think they somehow x-referenced orbital pictures with lander panoramas & known topography to work out where their landers are. This link is where I saw it:

http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/newsroom/p ressreleases/20061204a.html