Help Wanted, Looking for Lander Wreck

The Mars Polar Lander was a robotic mission to Mars, scheduled to land near the south polar region of the Red Planet and conduct scientific investigations related to the clime, the soil and the ice in that respective area. In 1999, the probe finally reached Mars and began its descent towards the surface. Contact was lost during landing, probably due to a high speed impact with the surface and after nine year the MPL is still missing.

Since not even the wreckage of the spacecraft was found, NASA believes that finding it would enable the researchers to established what went wrong during the descent. "If we can find the Mars Polar Lander and be convinced we understand what we're looking at, it might provide some clues as to what went wrong. There could be lessons there that are applicable to future landers", said Alfred McEwen from the University of Arizona.

The Mars Global Surveyor satellite found some evidence of the malfunctioned probe in 2000, but scientists eventually classified it as a mirage. Now NASA believes that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter may have a better chance. In summer last year, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, HiRISE for short, took a couple of photographs of the designated landing spot, but apparently NASA is too busy to take a look at them.

Spot the Mars Polar Lander

"This was also the southern summer on Mars, so the site was well illuminated", said McEwen. So, the HiRISE team is now inviting the public to help them analyze the 18 images containing 1.6 billion pixels each, in the hope that the wreck of the MPL will be found.

"If your computer screen is 1000 by 1000, that means you need 1600 screenshots to view one image. On the HiRISE team, we haven't put much effort into looking for this – we're too busy with other things. We just don't know exactly what it will look like", said McEwen. The feature that could be seen in the images provided by NASA on their website may include the lander, the heat shield of the backshell and the parachute – all measuring only a few pixels on a background of 28.8 billion others.

To make matters even worse, the landscape is scattered with naturally occurring features of similar size. "It's a terrible place to look for things like this. And years have gone by, so some dust will have settled – it may not stand out now", he said.

Meanwhile, NASA is expecting the landing of the Phoenix Mars Lander on May 25. Hopefully, it will not have the same faith as the MPL since they both use the same technologies.


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