Inspired by this question about all the missions to Mars in 2020, where on this planet will the rover of the mission that China has planned, land and operate ?
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$\begingroup$ A landing spot with lots of imposing topography would be nice, but you also don't want your ¥1,000,000,000 lander to roll down a hill and end up upside-down right after touchdown. $\endgroup$– Michael SeifertAug 14, 2019 at 19:01
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1$\begingroup$ @MichaelSeifert That hill may not be that imposing because it's not steep at all , its structure being 600 km wide. The same applies to Valles Marineris, its walls are not so steep as one might think, seeing it from space, I think the Grand Canyon is much more impressive so i've deleted a sentence. $\endgroup$– CornelisAug 14, 2019 at 19:42
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4$\begingroup$ @Conelisinspace It's true that Olympus Mons isn't that steep. It has an average slope of 5°. However that's average. There are still many rough and bumpy landscapes on Olympus Mons that far exceed a tilt of 5° making it dangerous for a rover. Same applies to Valles Marineris. Also Olympus Mons "pokes" out of the martian atmosphere so parachutes are less effective, making landing harder. Also there's no point landing there. It's better to land somewhere where's there's likely to be water or thriving micro-organisms. $\endgroup$– Star ManAug 14, 2019 at 20:19
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1$\begingroup$ You may find their landing site in the candidate landing sites for similar missions funded by NASA. $\endgroup$– CourageousPotatoAug 14, 2019 at 23:19
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1$\begingroup$ All told Wikipedia says where it will land is "TBD". So stay tuned. $\endgroup$– Oscar LanziAug 15, 2019 at 9:53
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They're currently looking at two sites in Utopia Planitia. Each landing site will have a landing eclipse of 40 by 100km.
This region has a cool feature in;
Utopia Planitia may have been extensively resurfaced by mud flows, so it is an interesting place to investigate potential past subsurface habitability. Alfred McEwen
This is an edited version of this image to include a rough approximation of the Tianwen-1 landing sites.
