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Occasionally a lander or rover (manned or unmanned) will land close enough to a previous mission to enable examination or photographs of the previous mission to be taken by the new mission. What are some examples of this?

  • May be the moon, Mars, or any other body except Earth.
  • Both missions must be on the surface of the body (i.e. orbital photography doesn't count).
  • Must be two different missions (e.g. a rover taking a picture of its own lander doesn't count).
  • This is a follow-up to Have there been long-term observations of the effects of lunar exposure to equipment?.
  • I already know of Apollo 12 examining, photographing, and returning parts of Surveyor 3, so that answer is taken.
  • I would appreciate refinements to this question's tags.
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  • $\begingroup$ Tags look good, there is always the rendezvous tag, but I'm not sure of the spirit of the tag includes a land rendezvous of a rover with another surface craft. It might apply though and I'd certainly support defining the tag that way, or making a separate surface-rendezvous tag. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Sep 29, 2018 at 7:05

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Within the constraints you posed, no. The premise of your first sentence is incorrect, just about all lander missions have landed very far apart.

Here's a map of US Moon missions:

enter image description here

The closest pair after Apollo 12/Surveyor 3 is Apollo 11/Surveyor 5, which are 25 km apart, which is too far (no line of sight, and too far to walk within the time constraints).

Similarly, Mars missions have all landed hundreds to thousands of km apart.

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  • $\begingroup$ Apollo 12 / Surveyor 3 is the "occasion" cited in my first sentence. Otherwise, a good answer. $\endgroup$
    – DrSheldon
    Sep 29, 2018 at 0:06
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List of artifical objects on Mars and a map:

Map

As we can see, there is no landed missions close enough to each other on Mars.

List of artifical objects on the Moon and a map:

enter image description here

Interesting that Luna-24 landed very close to Luna-23. It's maybe the only case one lander could photograph enother. But there is no information such attempt was made.

All other lunar missions were over 10s km apart from each other.

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    $\begingroup$ The cameras on Luna 23 and 24 appear to be fixed-direction and mounted quite low, so at ~2000 meters apart, it's likely that they're over the horizon from one another and pointing in the wrong directions. $\endgroup$
    – Mark
    Nov 14, 2020 at 3:44

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