Mars Polar Lander

On January 3, 1999 the Delta 7425-9.5 (no. D265) was launched from Cape Canaveral, in the United States onto the surface of Mars. NASA describes the intended purpose of this spacecraft/ robot was, “to deploy a lander and two penetrators (known as Deep Space 2) on the surface of Mars to extend our knowledge on the planet's past and present water resources. The objective was to explore the never-before-studied carbon dioxide icecap about 1,000 kilometers from the south pole.” Through doing this NASA was able to uncover data simultaneously alongside with data collected with the Mars Climate Orbiter in attempt to uncover if life could ever be plausible.

Although MLP (mars polar lander) was scheduled to land on Mars on December 3, 1999 at 21:03 (9:03) Mountain Time, contact with MPL was unfortunately lost at 20:00 (8:00) MT on December 3, about 6 minutes prior to entering Mars’ atmosphere. This was a huge problem for the spacecraft and because of this incident NASA attempted to create an alternate communication system for tracing MLP. On December 16, 1999, nearly two weeks after communication had been lost, NASA began looking for signs of the lander on the surface of Mars by using the Mars Global Surveyor (American successful robotic spacecraft developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion which observes mars from a low altitude) but a mouth after attempts on January 17, 2000 NASA terminated all efforts to establish contact with the lost lander.

The truth behind the failure of the MLP will never fully be known, but according to NASA’s independent observations, “ the most probable cause of the failure was the generation of spurious signals when the lander's legs deployed during the descent. These signals falsely indicated that the spacecraft had touched down on Mars when in fact it was still descending. The main engines prematurely shut down, and the lander fell to the Martian landscape.”

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/mpl/indepth

https://mars.nasa.gov/programmissions/missions/past/globalsurveyor/

student research summary

by Keona S.

History of Mars Polar Lander

The Mars Polar lander was a fail. The two micro probes were launched “piggyback” on January 3, 1999 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 17 to study the soil and climate. But was lost on December 3, 1999 which was it’s landing date. Nobody really knows what happened to make the communication fail, but it never reported back to Earth after it’s attempting to land on Mars south pole. Though they don’t know what caused to loss of communication but scientists think that there was an error in the programing that caused it to touch down it’s legs while still in decent. Scientists think that they may have possibly found the crash site due to the parachute and discolored sand that may have been caused by the engine.

This is clearly a robot because it has all six characteristics. It’s body measured 3.6 meters wide and 1.06 meters tall with legs and solar arrays. Another characteristic is it also has a brain, it has a faraday cage which has the computer inside. Something else that makes it a robot is the sensors, it’s sensors will tell it when it’s getting close to something. One more thing is actuators which converts energy, which the Mars Polar Lander has. Program is another thing that is needed to be a robot which it had despite having an error in it. The last characteristic that it has to have is behavior which the Mars Polar Lander has, thus proving it is a robot.

https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/ds2/fact.html

https://mars.nasa.gov/msp98/lander/

https://www.space.com/1153-mars-polar-lander-clues-crash-site.html