Mount Howe and the Scott Glacier moraines (southernmost rock)
Unreviewed draft
This page was built from a teammate-supplied list. The text is teammate-written, unreviewed. Sources pending.
This is a candidate: a suggestion that is not in our reference list.
Summary
not provided
Location
- Country
- Antarctica
- Coordinates
- -87.37, -149.50
- Elevation (m)
- 2900
- Year first used as an analog
- not provided
Terrain and geology
not provided
Climate
not provided
Parameters matched
not provided
Why it is an analog
Highest-latitude exposed rock on Earth, so it gives the best illumination match available (lunar target weight 0.18) plus the strongest cold-dry score (0.15). Terrain slope (15-23° measured on moraines) is moderate. No previous planetary use, and it lies more than 1,000 km from the Dry Valleys sites.
Key differences: where the analogy breaks down
Granite, not anorthosite; sun still 20x higher than at the lunar pole; access only by Twin Otter from South Pole (287 km).
Experiments done
Only soil-biology sampling (southernmost known indigenous microbes) and a GPS station; no planetary campaign.
Experiments proposed
Low-sun illumination experiments on rock (Sun never rises above ~26°, lowest of any rock on Earth): solar-panel tracking, long-shadow navigation and terrain-relative imaging at grazing light; regolith (moraine) mechanics at 2,500-2,900 m in -40 °C; ice-adjacent volatile prospecting with neutron spectrometers at an ice/rock contact like a cold-trap edge.
How to adjust it
Deploy shade fences to create artificial permanently shadowed patches on the moraine; spread anorthosite simulant on a cleared pad; use winter-season (polar night) runs to emulate lunar night survival.
Access
not provided
Hazards
not provided
Sources
Sources pending (no sources in CSV).
v1 score, percentile and overlap flag
A descriptive lookup of scores v1 already stored. It is not a test, and a high percentile here does not show that this is a good analog.
v1 used this site
No. The nearest v1 site, "mcmurdo dry valleys", is about 1215.6 km away.
| Score view | Result | Percentile | Score | Distance to tile (km) | Overlap flag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Connecting Ridge C1, Base | No land tileno land tile within the match radius | not provided | not provided | not provided | not provided |
| Connecting Ridge C1, Landing and mobility | No land tileno land tile within the match radius | not provided | not provided | not provided | not provided |
| Connecting Ridge C1, Power and night | No land tileno land tile within the match radius | not provided | not provided | not provided | not provided |
| Shackleton rim, Base | No land tileno land tile within the match radius | not provided | not provided | not provided | not provided |
| Shackleton rim, Landing and mobility | No land tileno land tile within the match radius | not provided | not provided | not provided | not provided |
| Shackleton rim, Power and night | No land tileno land tile within the match radius | not provided | not provided | not provided | not provided |
Overlap flag: whether the tile used for the score is one v1 flagged as stable in its top group across the Monte Carlo runs.
What these scores can and cannot tell you
- This is a lookup of scores v1 already stored. It is descriptive and is not a test of the method.
- A site is matched to the best-scoring tile that passed the gates within the match radius. A different radius would give different numbers.
- Tiles are large compared with most sites, so a score describes the surrounding area, not the site itself.
- Scores exist only for tiles that passed the land-cover and data gates. A gated-out or unscored site has no score, which says nothing about how good an analog it is.
- Percentile is the share of scored tiles in that view with a lower score.
- The Moon score is effectively terrain only. Mars is a low-confidence secondary result.
- v1 failed its negative controls, so a high percentile here does not show that a site is a good analog.
- The ranking is not checked against independent data. Gravity, air, dust and radiation are not scored.
- Sites are compared with views of their own body only.
- Match radius: 20 km, the radius v1 used.