In early 1999, an ambitious Mars lander was launched. The mission of the Mars Polar Lander was to land on Mars, sample the ground and air, and get us one step closer to putting people on the Red Planet. Landing near the polar region of Mars as tricky, but the payoff was to learn more about the ice cap known to exist there.
Later that year, however, the lander was lost. It was later determined that the rockets that were to lower it gently down the surface cut off prematurely, and it plummeted down the last 40 meters instead. It’s possible that when the landing gear snapped into place while still high above the surface, the jolt they made was misinterpreted by the sensors onboard as meaning the lander had touched down. The rockets cut off, and down it went.
In the intervening years, people have wondered exactly where it landed. By knowing this, for example, future missions might be able to take higher resolution imagery and find out if there are any more clues to what went wrong.
Plus, humans are curious. Where on Mars is MPL?
It’s possible that it’s now been found. The Mars Global Surveyor was launched in 1996, and has had a phenomenally successful mission, taking thousands of spectacular high-resolution images. And now, it appears to have found the final resting place of MPL.
The image above may show the MPL (click to see a much higher resolution and larger image). This image was taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera, the high-res imager onboard MGS (run by the Malin Space Science Systems company). The darker area to the lower left would be where the rockets disturbed the ground, and the bright spot would the lander itself. They may have also found the ejected parachute, located a few hundred meters to the west.
This image was actually taken some time ago, in 2000, but it was difficult to interpret. However, the Mars Global Surveyor took images of the landing sites of the two rovers which landed in early 2004, and used those sites as a comparison. The results are consistent with this being MPL.
With the location now established, the MGS can take higher resolution images. It’s hard to know exactly what will be learned from them (if we knew in advance, then it wouldn’t be exploration, would it?), but one thing that would be interesting would be to see what happens to a spacecraft after several years on the surface. With a resolution of 0.5 meters (roughly 18 inches) the images won’t tell us much, but they’ll be interesting nonetheless.
It’s worth noting that they almost certainly found Viking 2 as well! This landed way back in 1976. The image is very compelling:
The configuration is strikingly similar, and the location is about right. Mind you, the lander is only a couple of meters across.
I remember the Viking missions. They were designed specifically to take high resolution images, of course, but also to sample to surface and test it for signs of life. The results were maddeningly inconclusive, and are still argued over today (but most scientists agree the results were negative). But it opened wide the door to surface exploration of Mars, a door that is still open — and very inviting — today.
May 5th, 2005 at 5:39 pm
Very nice. One typo: You said that Viking 2 landed in 1997, instead of 1976.
May 5th, 2005 at 6:11 pm
Heh. Yup, that’s a straight typo. I fixed it, thanks!
May 5th, 2005 at 7:53 pm
Great! Now show me the lower half of the Luner Lander on the moon. If we can look at the sun, we can look at the moon.
May 5th, 2005 at 7:58 pm
Great detective work!
Now that the locations are known, will you be re-visiting them for additional photography?
Are super-resolution images a possibility?
May 5th, 2005 at 9:40 pm
Bah! That Viking picture is clearly some form of hyperdimensional energy relay device!
May 6th, 2005 at 5:06 am
If the landingmotor did switch off at 40 meters, would it have left such an impressive blast-zone? Actually, this picture looks exactly like what you expect to find after a successful touchdown! However, if you look closely at the terrain at the highest resolution picture it is covered with these black pits. (Or whatever they are) If these are not compression artifacts, but real surface features it means that MPL landed in some pretty rough terrain. Maybe it just ran out of luck at the very last moment of its journey?
May 6th, 2005 at 6:43 am
[...] t Was Quick..maybe The Mars Polar Lander may have been found already! See this post at Bad Astronomy for the story. This entry was posted on Fr [...]
May 6th, 2005 at 7:39 am
[...] m
Interesting post about the possible finding of the Mars Polar Lander over at Bad Astronomy. I’m not too much of a science person, but I find it amazing the things we can do ho [...]
May 6th, 2005 at 9:16 am
Very intersting. One quick question. How can we tell the black area near the lander (if that is what it really is) are blast marks and not “skid” marks, bounce marks, or debris from when the lander crashed? How do we know it didn’t dig up or knocked away some soil or lost some pieces and then continued moving a bit before coming to a stop?
May 6th, 2005 at 7:45 pm
Well, golly! That’s amazing they could spot the baby… Didn’t someone also analyze Clementine images and find some Apollo??? It’s incredible what you can do sometimes!
I have a faint memory of something that crashed on Mars or didn’t reach it or whatever… I know they had mixed metric with inches. Which one was that again???
May 10th, 2005 at 2:45 pm
Michelle, it was Mars Climate Orbiter, and the confusion was over pounds of thrust versus Newtons of thrust. For more info see here:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Parliament/2191/MCO.htm
Did that come out as a hyperlink?
Anyway, amazing images, and pretty amazing that it is possible to infer such detail from images where the size of the object under observation is of the same order of magnitude as the resolution limit! Maybe with the next generation of cameras orbiting Mars they’ll even find tiny little Beagle 2 (or the remains thereof). Who’d have thought you could send a lander to Mars for less than $75,000,000? Oh … you can’t.
October 25th, 2005 at 8:07 am
The official Mars Climate Orbiter site:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/orbiter/
Nigel’s site seems to be biased towards conspiracy theory.
May 18th, 2006 at 11:07 am
phentermine…
Managua conciseness chaperon blonds stimulates:phentermine http://phenterminehclhere.blogspot.com/ …
December 4th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
[...] a couple examples of images of things on Mars taken from orbit. Not great, but examples still. From Bad Astronomy From the Planetary Society I was looking for a slightly more detailed article that included [...]