SP Crater and SP lava flow
Unreviewed draft
This page was built from a teammate-supplied list. The text is teammate-written, unreviewed. Sources pending.
Summary
not provided
Location
- Country
- USA (Arizona)
- Coordinates
- 35.58, -111.63
- Elevation (m)
- 2100
- Year first used as an analog
- 1965
Terrain and geology
not provided
Climate
not provided
Parameters matched
not provided
Why it is an analog
Most boulder-rich accessible basalt flow in the US Southwest; heritage test site.
Key differences: where the analogy breaks down
Steep cinder cone (≈30° slopes) exceeds lunar landing slopes; vesicular, oxidised basalt; vegetation on older surfaces.
Experiments done
USGS drilled and tested the 'Explorer' geology vehicle on the extremely blocky SP flow (1965-67); Desert RATS habitat and rover traverses in the San Francisco Volcanic Field; NASA JETT Artemis EVA field tests in the volcanic field (2024).
Experiments proposed
Mobility testing over high-rock-abundance terrain (worst-case lunar boulder fields); lava-flow-margin science traverse; LiDAR/stereo hazard mapping; EVA suit abrasion tests on vesicular basalt.
How to adjust it
Grade a flat pad on the flow apron as a landing-zone mock-up; scatter simulant over aa to fill voids like lunar regolith.
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
Yes. This place matches the v1 site "sf volcanic field", about 28.4 km away.
| Score view | Result | Percentile | Score | Distance to tile (km) | Overlap flag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Connecting Ridge C1, Base | Scored | 78.4 | 6.7 | 15.5 | Not in a flagged tile |
| Connecting Ridge C1, Landing and mobility | Scored | 84.2 | 7.2 | 15.5 | Not in a flagged tile |
| Connecting Ridge C1, Power and night | Scored | 78.4 | 4.9 | 15.5 | Not in a flagged tile |
| Shackleton rim, Base | Scored | 90.2 | 36.0 | 1.8 | Not in a flagged tile |
| Shackleton rim, Landing and mobility | Scored | 98.0 | 41.2 | 1.8 | In a flagged tile |
| Shackleton rim, Power and night | Scored | 90.2 | 26.2 | 1.8 | 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.