page_title: Mars Geyser Hopper
section_title: Spacecraft
hierarchical_section_title: Mars Geyser Hopper / Spacecraft
caption_attribution_description: The Mars Polar Lander is suspended from a crane in the Spacecraft Assembly and Encapsulation Facility-2 (SAEF-2) before being lowered to a workstand. There it will be mated to the third stage of the Boeing Delta II rocket before it is transported to Launch Pad 17B, Cape Canaveral Air Station. The lander, which will be launched on Jan. 3, 1999, is a solar-powered spacecraft designed to touch down on the Martian surface near the northern-most boundary of the south pole in order to study the water cycle there. The lander also will help scientists learn more about climate change and current resources on Mars, studying such things as frost, dust, water vapor and condensates in the Martian atmosphere. It is the second spacecraft to be launched in a pair of Mars '98 missions. The first is the Mars Climate Orbiter, which was launched aboard a Delta II rocket from Launch Complex 17A on Dec. 11, 1998.
context_page_description: The Mars Geyser Hopper is a NASA design reference mission for a Discovery-class spacecraft concept that would investigate the springtime carbon dioxide Martian geysers found in regions around the south pole of Mars.
  The power technology that MGH proposed to use was the Advanced Stirling radioisotope generator. NASA finished the ASRG design and made one test unit of the device but the program was concluded by the mid-2010s. Neither InSight nor any of the next Discovery's semi-finalists use the ASRG or an RTG due to high demand and limited supply of the type of plutonium it relies on.
caption: The Mars Polar Lander, which made an attempt at landing on a pole, a task later completed by Phoenix Mars polar lander
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