Mars Surveyor '98
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Spacecraft | |
Manufacturer | Lockheed Martin |
Mission insignia |
Mars Surveyor '98 was a mission in NASA's Mars Exploration Program that launched the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander to the planet Mars. The mission was to study the Martian weather, climate, water and carbon dioxide (CO2) budget, to understand the reservoirs, behavior, and atmospheric role of volatiles and to search for evidence of long-term and episodic climate changes.[citation needed] The Mars Polar Lander also carried two surface-penetrator probes for the New Millennium Program's Deep Space 2 mission. Both spacecraft were launched in 1998 and both were lost.
Spacecraft
Orbiter
The orbiter was lost due to a miscalculation in trajectory caused by an unintended and undetected mismatch between
Lander
Investigators concluded that the most likely cause of the lander's failure was a spurious sensor signal associated with the craft's legs falsely indicating the craft had touched down when in fact it was some 40 meters above the surface.[
Mission
The Mars Surveyor 1998 program spacecraft development cost US$193.1 million. Launch costs for the Mars Surveyor '98 Program was estimated at US$91.7 million and mission operations at US$42.8 million.[2] The Mars Climate Orbiter was part of NASA's 10-year Mars Surveyor Program,[citation needed] with launches every 26 months when the Earth and Mars are favorably positioned.
See also
References
- ^ BBC News Sci/Tech "Confusion leads to Mars failure", September 30, 1999. Retrieved 24 June 2014
- ^ "Mars Climate Orbiter". National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Retrieved January 19, 2016.