Landing Site Selection Criteria

The proposed landing site is at 22 N, 70 E, on the east edge of Mare Anguus (east of Mare Crisium). I christened the area Angus Bay, for reasons explained elsewhere in the Artemis Data Book. The little red circle marks the spot in the illustration below.

Angus Bay, on the Northeastern Shore of Mare Crisium

The illustration shows a map of the moon, as imaged by Clementine, with the nearside centered.

We have to consider a lot of factors when we choose a landing site, especially when it may be the location of the moon's first permanent city:

• Lighting: On the technical side, we want the right light angles for landing; crater rims should show distinctly and crater floors should not be completely in shadow. On the entertainment side, we want good lighting for making a movie; mid-morning or mid-afternoon light angles are best.
  
• Landscape: Here our technical desires are in conflict with the entertainment aspect of the mission. For assured mission success, we want a broad, flat plain; but to make it entertaining we want a rugged terrain.
  
• Terrain: For shielding, we want to be near a crater wall or mountain. We also need diverse and interesting terrain with sinuous rilles, lava tubes, and mare basins nearby for lunar base expansion into lava tubes and easy to access shielding materials.
  
• Earth view: This is most important to the entertainment value of the flight. We want Earth in the background, just off the horizon. That establishes a wide locus of possible locations around the rim of the moon as we see her from Earth, from about 5 to 30 degrees from the limb. The technical issue is that if the Earth is somewhere in the sky, we can establish good point-to-point communication.
  
• Identifiable location: This is pure entertainment. The moon is the best advertisement for herself; she circles our globe visible to almost everyone on Earth. We want everyone to be able to look up, point to a spot on the moon, and say, "Right there; that's where they are!"
  
• Resources: Lots of deep, fine dust appears to be our best bet for finding oxygen, hydrogen, and helium-3. The lunar maria have KREEP (potassium, Rare Earth Elements, Phosphorus) material and abundant iron and titanium, while highlands have more aluminum, silicon, and other elements. Crater floors and rilles might be the best place to look for crystals. Different landforms have different resources, so we want easy access to each of them.
  

The proposed site at Angus Bay fits each of these criteria. It's not the only place that fits, but from all we know now it seems to be the best choice. See the list of Clementine images of the site for some more detailed views of the area near Angus Bay.

More information about landing site selection is in the internal notes of the Lunar Science Technical Committee in section 6.7.2.1.3 and the Site Selection Technical Committee in section 6.7.3.1.5 of the Artemis Data Book.