Mars Rovers may Help Find Mars Polar Lander |
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Written by spacetravel.org
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Thursday, 12 May 2005 19:23 |
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Images of the landing sites of the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity are helping NASA confirm the whereabouts of the Mars Polar Lander (MPL), which crashed on Mars in December 1999.
Investigators believe that the MPL shut down its reverse thrusters too soon, which caused it to plummet the final 40 meters to the surface. After the accident, the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor looked for a site that may have been darkened by an engine blast, with a bright parachute within a kilometers distance. The MOC found such a site in 2000, but the resolution of the images was too low to be conclusive.
Since then, using the same technique, the MOC team has found the twin rovers. Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, California, which operates the MOC, says that images of the Mars rovers landing sites revealed things in common with the possible MPL site. In the next few months, the team will use higher-resolution imaging to re-examine the possible crash site.
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