Mars Polar Lander, the most recent craft to join the hunt, is to zoom across 470 million miles of space, traveling about 2,000 times farther than the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Fla. Nothing of the squat bundle being readied for launching suggested that the spacecraft would be able to extend tripod legs, solar panels, a camera mast and a long arm to form a gangly robot some 12 feet long. Dr. John McNamee, the program manager for the lander and orbiter, moved around the folded craft in a clean suit, booties, plastic gloves and a face mask meant to keep his germs from inadvertently making the trek to Mars and contaminating the planet. The compact lander, he said, is a good example of NASA's resolve to do more with less. The relentless push for lower costs, McNamee added, means the lander will use regular rockets to slow its descent rather than innovative air bags, as Pathfinder did when it repeatedly bounced on the rocky surface before coming to a halt.
Air bags weigh more, and thus cost more to hurl into space.
Bulging outward from the craft were two spheres about the size of basketballs. These were microprobes, hitchhikers that will be fired from the lander just before it enters the Martian atmosphere. They just go right in. A first for the exploration of space, the microprobes are to slam into Mars at about 400 hundred miles per hour, shattering their protective shells. The wide upper part of each probe, with antenna, circuits and batteries, will stop abruptly at the surface.