A recent analysis of images of the Red Planet may have located a lost spacecraft on Mars, according to a Department of Defense (DOD) agency. NASA, however, isn’t so sure.
On Dec. 3, 1999, NASA lost touch with the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft (SN: 3/4/00, p. 159). Controllers presume the craft crashed onto the Martian surface. However, pictures taken of the probable landing site by the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft had not shown signs of the craft or its protective shell, heat shield, and parachute.
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