Pinacate and Gran Desierto (El Pinacate)
Unreviewed draft
This page was built from a teammate-supplied list. The text is teammate-written, unreviewed. Sources pending.
Summary
not provided
Location
- Country
- Mexico (Sonora)
- Coordinates
- 31.77, -113.50
- Elevation (m)
- 600
- Year first used as an analog
- 1970
Terrain and geology
not provided
Climate
not provided
Parameters matched
not provided
Why it is an analog
Apollo heritage site with world-class maar craters in a hyper-arid setting.
Key differences: where the analogy breaks down
Very hot; volcanic not impact; dunes and creosote shrubs.
Experiments done
Apollo crews trained on maar craters (Elegante, MacDougal) and basalt flows; later desert ecology and volcanology studies.
Experiments proposed
Large-crater rim navigation; low-albedo basalt thermal tests; lander plume-surface interaction on fine dune sand nearby; dust-devil observations.
How to adjust it
Use winter night ops; seed basalt simulant patches; shade tents for thermal-extreme tests.
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, "sf volcanic field", is about 439.1 km away.
| Score view | Result | Percentile | Score | Distance to tile (km) | Overlap flag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Connecting Ridge C1, Base | Scored | 91.4 | 18.4 | 6.1 | Not in a flagged tile |
| Connecting Ridge C1, Landing and mobility | Scored | 96.7 | 21.0 | 6.1 | In a flagged tile |
| Connecting Ridge C1, Power and night | Scored | 91.4 | 13.3 | 6.1 | Not in a flagged tile |
| Shackleton rim, Base | Scored | 91.5 | 37.8 | 6.1 | Not in a flagged tile |
| Shackleton rim, Landing and mobility | Scored | 98.8 | 43.2 | 6.1 | In a flagged tile |
| Shackleton rim, Power and night | Scored | 91.5 | 27.4 | 6.1 | Not in a flagged tile |
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.