Viking's best resolution was down around 20 meters, sometimes a little less, and until Odyssey came along I think people overlooked how useful that resolution can be for understanding most of the landscapes on Mars. MOC's high resolution is indispensable for seeing the fine detail, but I found myself going back to the old Viking images time after time when MOC's "keyhole view" left me puzzled about just what I was seeing. If I were running things and had it to do over again, I'd send a THEMIS-class camera to Mars first for a few years for a complete survey of the planet; then I'd send a hi-res camera to look at things we'd identified in medium-res as interesting.

I still think that amateurs have something to contribute to the study of Mars. But the well's been pretty badly poisoned by all the controversy over alien artifacts over the years. People like Hoagland have made some pretty vicious accusations against scientists like Malin, and the scientists in their turn have sometimes responded badly as well. The polarization has made the scientific side pretty resistant to looking at amateur work for fear of getting tangled up in anomalism, and that's a shame.

--Robert