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Chapters Coordination Task Force
Red Colony
Spot the spacecraft
Scientists hope the public can help find the Mars Polar Lander's resting place in released images.
Katharine Sanderson
Back in 1999, the Mars Polar Lander (MPL) went missing as it entered Mars's
atmosphere,
and its fate has been a mystery ever since. But now there is a chance for a
member of the
public to locate the missing spacecraft and help work out what went wrong.
The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), based at the University
of
Arizona in Tucson, has a raft of images of the MPL's projected landing area, but
scans of
the huge images came up blank.
So now, the HiRISE team's blog has published 18 images, and has challenged the
public to
find the lost lander.
"You may in fact be the first person to see MPL in the nearly 10 years since it
left Earth,"
reads the blog entry. The team also provides pictures of parts of the lander as
it would
appear to HiRISE, to help identification. The challenge is to scan the pictures
and see if you
can spot the MPL, or its remains, somewhere near the intended landing area.
8th Australian Mars Exploration Conference - Spaceward Bound Australia
Phoenix - The Case for Water
