Small Mars Mission Architecture Study

Figure 6

The science activities enabled at different orbit configurations; target distance is plotted against the angular resolution (=imaging capability of a camera). TASO at 17600 km altitude with current system requirements (10^–4 angular resolution of the optical instrument, marked with black hexagon) enables full-disk monitoring and observation of regional processes (e.g., dust storms and clouds). The Science Orbiter (see Section 4) at 320 km altitude with current system requirements (10^–6 angular resolution of the optical instrument, marked with black hexagon) supports high-resolution imaging of the surface (e.g., fine-scale geology, mineralogy, resources, and high-resolution topography), figure modified from [9].