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how close to the LZ? If its too close, you run the risk of the guidance going kaput and you smashing the LZ to shreds. About 15-20 KM seems about far enough. Or am I missing something?
If we have humans on the transit, we should be able to separate it a day before capture burn and still get its guidance within 800 meters accurate. We just need to track it from the main spacecraft to keep the navigation fixes correct.
Still, we don't want it to impact near the LZ, we want it at the right distance to get seismic data... 135° great circle distance to the seismometer array should do it.
Accuracy during landing is needed for another reason: It reduces the errors in the seismic data. We can reconstruct the impact zone from the seismic data, but we get more inaccuracy, the worse the impact accuracy is to start with.if we can monitor the impact visually from space with a telescope, we should be able to get much better impact data, but I can't tell the visibility during this work-load heavy phase.
Maybe we should coordinate the impact with a previously deployed Mars satellite.
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