Has Mars Polar Lander been found?
Posted: Wed, Mar 21, 2001, 11:35 AM ET (1635 GMT)
Analysts with a military mapping agency may have located the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft in images of the surface of Mars, according to media reports. SPACE.com first reported Tuesday night that experts at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) have located the spacecraft in images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft. The evidence was described as "intriguing and tentative" in a New York Times article Thursday: under the best conditions the lander would occupy only a few pixels in even the highest-resolution MGS images. SPACE.com reported, though, that the evidence to date appears to show that MPL is sitting on the surface on all three landing legs, which calls into question a high-speed impact that a review panel concluded a year ago was the most likely cause of the mission's failure. NASA officials are skeptical of the NIMA claims, and NASA and NIMA officials say it could take months of analysis of other images to conclude whether MPL has been found.
Analysts with a military mapping agency may have located the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft in images of the surface of Mars, according to media reports. SPACE.com first reported Tuesday night that experts at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) have located the spacecraft in images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft. The evidence was described as "intriguing and tentative" in a New York Times article Thursday: under the best conditions the lander would occupy only a few pixels in even the highest-resolution MGS images. SPACE.com reported, though, that the evidence to date appears to show that MPL is sitting on the surface on all three landing legs, which calls into question a high-speed impact that a review panel concluded a year ago was the most likely cause of the mission's failure. NASA officials are skeptical of the NIMA claims, and NASA and NIMA officials say it could take months of analysis of other images to conclude whether MPL has been found.
Related Links:
| <<previous article | next article>> |
|
news in brief
|
|
|
|
news links
|
|
Wednesday, March 18
Firefly Aerospace looks ahead to moon missions, more launches after Alpha rocket’s return to flight
Austin (TX) American-Statesman — 7:06 am ET (1106 GMT) ESA seeks scalable VLEO platforms for satellite video
ESA — 7:06 am ET (1106 GMT) Now Open: Request for Information (RFI) for the Mid-size LEO satellite INDustrialisation (M-IND) initiative
ESA — 7:06 am ET (1106 GMT) Starlink rival SES sells ‘space bonds’ ranked lower than hybrids
Luxembourg Times — 7:04 am ET (1104 GMT) Elon Musk’s Starlink now available in UAE, says company's website
The National (UAE) — 7:02 am ET (1102 GMT) |
