Landing a spacecraft is like landing a plane – that’s when you need the real pilot, or in the case of a Mars landing a good navigation system. Since the descent speed at landing is much to0 fast for communications with the earth to make any adjustments – something about the speed of light and light years, NASA is experimenting with Flash LiDAR to develop the 3D landing site map.
I found this product description from ASC of their Flash LIDAR unit to be fascinating. This is an important emerging technology for the future. All they need is to get to scale so they can lower the price.
The ability to perceive depth during a landing is crucial, which is why LiDAR makes much more sense than imagery.