Mars CTX MC30 Controlled Polar Mosaic

This product is a cartographically controlled mosaic of Mars Chart (MC) 30, Mare Australe. MC-30 covers approximately 4.7% of Mars' surface, from 65 degrees south through to 90 degrees south latitude, and 360 degrees in longitude. The images come from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's Context Camera (CTX), which has been returning ~5-6 meters per pixel images of Mars since 2008.

This product was produced using automated cartographic control network code that was then manually edited. It includes data through the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter CTX PDS release 48. The control network code incorporated all useable images in that release, and there were roughly 10,000 images that met our quality requirements. Those images cover 95.5% of the surface area of the region, though it is significantly more complete south of approximately 70 degrees north.

The mosaic was produced by priority-ordering images in an automated method that emphasized Spring/Autumn images, images with an emission or slew angle closest to 0 degrees, and images with the best pixel scale. The mosaic order was manually edited where severe discontinuities were observed due to seasonal frost or when low signal-to-noise images were emphasized. The mosaic was further cosmetically corrected to produce the appearance of an approximately similarly illuminated product throughout.

The final network has 3 million tie points, and 99.77% of them have residuals less than 1 pixel (RMS = 0.255 pixels). Re-smithed spacecraft (SPK) and camera (CK) kernels were produced from the solution, also available on this page.

The full polar mosaic was split into 4 quads to help with downloads. But the GeoTiffs are still ~100GB each. The use of a free application like "wget" is recommended for downloading.

Citation:
Robbins et al. (2019), Fully Controlled 6 meters per pixel Mosaic of Mars' South Polar Region, Earth and Space Science, Volume 7, Issue 10, DOI: 10.1029/2019EA001054, URL: https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EA001054

References:
Robbins, S. (2019), Mars's Red (575-625 nm) Seasonal Approximate Reflectivity Averaged Over Mars Years 24-28 From Mars Orbiter Camera, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, Volume 125, Issue 7, DOI: 10.1029/2019JE006231, URL: https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JE006231

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