Copyright 1999 Houston Chronicle Scientists have selected a frigid plateau layered with dust and ice near the south pole of Mars as the December landing site for the Mars Polar Lander, NASA said Wednesday. NASA Launched in early January, the polar lander and a pair of small spear-like probes are to touch down Dec. 3. Researchers hope a robotic digging tool on the lander and tiny drilling excavators on the spears will reveal whether there is ice in the subsoil.
Scientists hope to learn more about the climate history of the planet.
Now cold and dry, Mars may have once been warm and wet enough for life, some experts believe. It was selected from a handful of prospects because of its lack of steep slopes, jagged peaks or meteor craters and because of the curious lapping of ice upon dust. It will be the first attempt by any country at a landing at one of the Martian poles. Unlike NASA's Mars Pathfinder, which bounced to a landing in 1997 in what appeared to be an ancient, rock-strewn watershed in the planet's equatorial belt, the Polar Lander will employ braking rockets for a much gentler descent onto the softly folded terrain. As it begins descent, the Polar Lander will deploy a pair of basketball-sized companion probes that were designed to smack into the surface without parachutes at about 400 mph.