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Mars Space News

Mars Polar Lander Lost Again 197

Posted by samzenpus from the alien-joy-ride dept.
IZ Reloaded writes "The Mars Global Surveyor during one of its latest scans of the area where the Mars Polar Lander was originally spotted, discovers that the spacecraft is no longer there! Space.com reports, "We conclude that our interpretation of these features was in error. This is not the location of the Mars Polar Lander. Because the landing uncertainty ellipse is so much larger than our images, and we do not have another candidate to which to target...we cannot continue to hunt for the lander," the MSSS site explains."
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Mars Polar Lander Lost Again More

Mars Polar Lander Lost Again

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  • sigh... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20, 2005 @05:38AM (#13834081)
    Damn martian tow-away zones.

  • REAL Polar Landers.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by rylin ( 688457 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @05:40AM (#13834086)
    REAL Polar Landers don't ask for directions.

  • "spacecraft is no longer there"? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bad Ad ( 729117 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @05:40AM (#13834092)
    how can it "not longer be there"? this just shows it was never there in the first place...

    "(score:5, trying to intice comments about martians"
    • If anyone else (besides the mod in question) thinks that the parent was showing insight (no offense Big Ad; I know it's a joke) please step forward. I guess I could give the benefit of the doubt and say the mod could have accidentally modded as insightful, but meant funny, but the more I read comments the more I find instances like this. Either it was a mistake, or a bad mod. Whichever one it was I say to everyone: META MODERATE! Please? Since I have set my preferences to send messages about how my mod

      • yeah no joke (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Bad Ad ( 729117 )
        me? insightful? we need the ability to mod the modders.

        -1 American ;-)

      • Re:The mods strike again (Score:5, Funny)

        by FullCircle ( 643323 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @06:44AM (#13834287)
        It wasn't me, but some people refuse to mod funny because the poster gets no karma for it.

        That's why you get underrated, insightful, interesting, etc on funny posts lately.
        • It wasn't me, but some people refuse to mod funny because the poster gets no karma for it. That's why you get underrated, insightful, interesting, etc on funny posts lately.

          I do that when I mod as well, only I've actually read the pull down menu contents and only use +1 - Underrated instead of something else that doesn't fit. This is the preferred way to bestow karma upon a funny poster. It preserves the "Funny" from previous mods (and also doesn't show up in meta moderation...)

        • And I stopped meta-modding about a year ago, since I haven't had mod points for 2 years prior to that. WTF did I do wrong, and how can I fix it?
      • Since modding someone funny gives them no /. karma some have started using interesting or insightfull in it's place to better reward humor and this might explain the mod.
        Also whenever I meta mod and find I need to check the 'context' MOST of the time I'm MM-ing a post several weeks old, only once or twice has the article been still open for posting.
        That last bit said I still rarely see meta mods on my moderation anymore, though at one time I could expect to see about 20% of m
      • People like to moderate insightfull instead of funny even when they mean funny because the funny moderation does not count towards the total karma tally of the poster. So if a poster is all about the funny and gets blasted a few times, +20 funny and -5 troll/overrated and you have yourself negative karma.

        I dont garantee any of this is accurate as far as how funny affects your karma vs other, its just what I heard and what people are doing about it.
    • Maybe it was. One of the things the are looking for is the parachute. I mean, it's a parachute, on a planet that has high winds and dust devils forming constantly... I would think it could have been there orignally and have been blown a long long way from there in the past 5+ years.
    • Conclusively?

      With all the weather activity on Mars who's to say it hasn't been blown away?

      There might be more than mini-tornados at the poles.

  • Oh Great! Not again. (Score:3, Funny)

    by bjason82 ( 820735 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @05:42AM (#13834099)
    Proof again that when left to the responsibility of the government, they do things best. Then again, the martians could have taken it! Someday those little green bastards are going to get a knuckle sandwich.
    • Proof again that when left to the responsibility of the government, they do things best

      Yep. Better to leave it to all those private interplanetary exploration outfits. I've read Doc Smith so I know how this goes. If it weren't for gummint interference we'd have intergalactic travel and be driving around in cars made of Osnomean Arenak.

      • Re:Oh Great! Not again. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by david.given ( 6740 ) <dg@cowlark.com> on Thursday October 20, 2005 @07:16AM (#13834368) Homepage Journal
        If it weren't for gummint interference we'd have intergalactic travel and be driving around in cars made of Osnomean Arenak.

        Given the kind of crumple zones you'd get in a car made of arenak --- i.e. none at all --- I think I'll stick with plain steel, thanks. I don't like having all the kinetic energy of half a tonne of car travelling at 70 mph transferred to my torso via my seat belt!

        Of course, if you could fit the car with Bergenholms, that'd be a different matter, although I suspect that the kind of pinball game rush-hour traffic would become would be even more stressful than it currently is. At least when you're in a traffic jam you don't run the risk of ricocheting off some pensioner's pet gerbil and arriving on Mars.

        • By the end of the series they'd invented inertial dampeners hadn't they?

          (By being inside a zone of force so no outside forces had any effect on them, and they drove the ship using 5th and 6th order forces).

          It's a while since I last read the books.
        • No chance of ricochting off of a pet gerbil...with your Bergenholm on, you have no inertia,and no momentum either. When you hit the gerbil, you would stop abruptly, and since you were still inertialess, wouldn't feel a thing...jeez, what are they teaching you kids in Physics classes these day?

        • I don't like having all the kinetic energy of half a tonne of car travelling at 70 mph transferred to my torso via my seat belt!

          Why do people always say crazy things like this? Driving down the road at 70 MPH does not increase your body mass. You have to deal-with your body's kinetic energy. It makes little difference how much your car weighs (assuming you are hitting an immovable object).

          In any case, you don't want the passenger compartment to crumple, you want it to be as strong as humanly possible, al

          • Why do people always say crazy things like this? Driving down the road at 70 MPH does not increase your body mass. You have to deal-with your body's kinetic energy. It makes little difference how much your car weighs (assuming you are hitting an immovable object).

            Um... um... because I was talking about E.E. Doc Smith physics, which bear only a passing resemblance to real world physics?

            You're right about that, of course. Mea culpa.

            You could also eliminate the need for crumple-zones if the seats, or pe

      • it's the frickin zwilniks. ...but they'll be gone in a flash of primaries. qx, over and out
    • You're absolutely right - all the Mars Exploration Vehicles launched by private companies are currently working without a hitch!
    • Which is exactly why GWB is funding Nasa's Mars mission: to take the fight against these little green terrorists to their own planet.

    • Re:Oh Great! Not again. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Winkhorst ( 743546 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @07:57AM (#13834513)
      There seems to be an element here of the old "Heaven is perfect and immutable" belief system popularized by those ever so happy-go-lucky inhabitants of the Vatican over a couple of thousand years. Every time something changes, especially on Mars, the earlier observations are assumed to have been in error and the present conditions are assumed to be permanent and never changing. This goes back to the original observations of "canali" on Mars and includes the "proof" that the Martian face really wasn't there because it is no longer there. Now a spacecraft has been found; but NO, it couldn't have been found; because it's NOT THERE NOW! The parachute couldn't have blown away? The dust couldn't have covered the crash site? NO! IMPOSSIBLE! Why? Because it's not there now.... Perfect and immutable, just like the religious authorities have been telling us all along.

  • Isn't this the point...? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jeff_at_RAD ( 121656 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @05:42AM (#13834102) Homepage
    in the movie where you cue the scary music?

  • dust, frost? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Use Psychology ( 873643 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @05:42AM (#13834103)

    perhaps the lander could have been covered by dust, or c02 frost -- therefore eliminating the weak detection seen before?
    • RTFA and look the pictures before you give your 'solution'. Its clear from the second set of pictures that what they believed was the lander and its chute, are instead landscape features.

  • V'ger (Score:5, Funny)

    by eno7 ( 658006 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @05:42AM (#13834104)
    Maybe it will return one day as P'Lander to search for the makers.
  • Looks like there's a landerjacking in progress up there!
    • ... there's a perfectly innocent explanation. It eloped with Beagle and got married in secret in the Russian Orthodox monastery where all the Soviet probes defected to over the years.

      They're now setting up home in a pleasant spot on the slope of Mount Olympus overlooking the Mariner Valley and hoping to raise a family of small Lego buggies.

  • I knew it! (Score:2, Funny)

    by qazsedcft ( 911254 )
    It's THEM! THEY stole it to hide the truth from us! I told you!

  • Race you! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Frantactical Fruke ( 226841 ) <renekita@dlc . f i> on Thursday October 20, 2005 @05:44AM (#13834113) Homepage
    Let me be the first to say:

    Good job with the brooms, Martian dudes!
    Hope you enjoy the hardware.
    Sorry we forgot to pack any porn on the hard disk.

    • Re:Race you! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @05:54AM (#13834144) Homepage
      Sorry we forgot to pack any porn on the hard disk.

      Since it'd be roughly as exciting as seeing two dogs mating to them, I think that might be just as well...
      • "Let's do it like they do it on Discovery Channel..."

        Well, you're one fewer to bid against me when the Martian porn recovered from the Earth Polar Lander goes on Ebay, then.
        • Well, you're one fewer to bid against me when the Martian porn recovered from the Earth Polar Lander goes on Ebay, then.

          Go ahead. I'm sure it'll fit in well with the alien autopsy at Roswell you already have there.
      • Since it'd be roughly as exciting as seeing two dogs mating to them, I think that might be just as well...

        Maybe Martians have Furries... Or would they call them Humies? They have these Cons which they all dress up like humans and post the Martian version of Winger art on websites. Those dirty pervs!

      • If '50s science fiction movies are any guide, there's nothing that the Mars-Men want more than to breed with our women.

        If they turn out to be inaccurate in some small detail, then my whole life has been a lie.

    • Re:Race you! (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Sorry we forgot to pack any porn on the hard disk.

      The guys discovering the Pioneer 10/11 probe sure are in for a treat [wikipedia.org] though!
      Imagine their disappointment if they come to us, only to find out we aren't all living nude in harmony.
      • And if they land here in America they're in for a big surprise when it comes to typical human proportions. And I do mean big.
      • So does that mean I either need to shave or wax everything below the scalp in the name of science and interstellar diplomacy? I'll pretend you didn't say nude for now.
  • My guess is the lil green men took it to their underground lab for analysis.
    • My guess is the lil green men took it to their underground lab for analysis.

      So what you're saying is that it's getting probed as we speak? Man, they're going to be disappointed!

  • Misleading summary.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @05:48AM (#13834124) Homepage

    the spacecraft is no longer there!

    I think what the poster meant is the spacecraft was never there to begin with. With limited resolution and enough random dark spots and hills there's bound to be a few that look like they might be a parachute and a lander.

    Given how poor the images are I wonder why they ever thought this was the polar lander at all and not just natural features of mars?
    • We have satellites orbiting Earth that can read the numbers on a license plate and they can't get a good shot of the lander? Am I missing something here?

      • Re:Misleading summary.. (Score:5, Informative)

        by larkost ( 79011 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @08:57AM (#13834850)
        Two notes:

        To the best of my knowledge the best spy satellites have a resolution of about 4 inches. That is good enough to recognize that there is a license plate there, but not read it. I realize that hollywood regularly presents satellites as being capable of so much more, but that is hollywood.

        Getting a spy satellite into Earth orbit vs. getting the same hardware into orbit around Mars. And then add in the face that the satellite around mars has to do many jobs, and carry a really big antenna to phone home. All of a sudden it becomes clear why the spy satellite might have better resolution.
        • To the best of my knowledge the best spy satellites have a resolution of about 4 inches.

          Sure, but once you have a target you can survey it with high altitude drones, which have a resolution of 1 to 2 cm or better, depending on how undetected you want to be.

        • Re:Misleading summary.. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by GooberToo ( 74388 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @10:46AM (#13835843)
          Last I heard, ~4" resolution was available during the mid-80's. More current information on available resolutions is top secret and not available to the public.

          Chances are, resolutions available from modern spy sats provide better than 4" resolution...especially when you consider the improvements available in active optics (active mirrors, etc), radar, and IR technologies.

          • Re:Misleading summary.. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by MadCow42 ( 243108 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @02:32PM (#13838056) Homepage
            You can make a rough guess of their capabilities based on HUBBLE imagery, and add some factors for super-secret NSA abilities on top of that.

            Last time I was bored, I took a look at some raw Hubble images of Pluto, calculated the distance between Hubble and Earth on the day the picture was supposedly taken, and worked out the angle of view for 1 pixel of uninterpolated data from Hubble. Taking that angle down from Hubble's orbit height to Earth resulted in resolution just slightly better than 1" per pixel.

            The NSA supposedly has at LEAST Hubble resolution, if not remarkably better.

            (conspiracy theories, here we come...)
            MadCow.

            • Re:Misleading summary.. (Score:4, Interesting)

              by alanh ( 29068 ) * on Thursday October 20, 2005 @04:10PM (#13838880) Homepage
              Do a search on the Rayleigh criterion [wikipedia.org] as it pertains to optical telescopes. Take, for example, the 200" (5.8 m) telescope on Mount Palomar. Under optimal conditions, it has a resolution of about 0.2 arcseconds. Put it up in LEO at, say 200 miles, and that would be an equivalent of about 1.6 inches on the ground. The HST with it's 2.4 m mirror would be about 3 inches.

              Unless they're doing some fancy stuff with multiple satellites, the HST's resolution is about the limit of what you can expect with optical telescopes.

            • Re:Misleading summary.. (Score:4, Informative)

              by GooberToo ( 74388 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @05:33PM (#13839709)
              You can make a rough guess of their capabilities based on HUBBLE imagery, and add some factors for super-secret NSA abilities on top of that.

              That's very, very, very, very, very, very doubtful that you can draw any such conclusion from the performance of Hubble. Hubble is designed to look VERY far away. In fact, Hubble has problems if it tries to focus on an object too near (the earth for example).

              On top of that, Hubble is veyr much a modern telescope, simply put into orbit. It as very little in common with anything currently used as a spy telescope. Hubble is designed SPECIFICALLY to operate without an atmosphere. Spy sats are designed SPECIFICALLY to deal with atmospheric effects. Basically, Hubble and a spy telescopes have nothing but superficial commonalities.

              Your assertion makes about as much sense as saying something like, "You can make a rough guess at what an orange tastes like by eating an apple." What? Sure, they are both fruits, but commonalities stop there.
              • If the us military complex nsa/fema and top secret projects spend $450billion, you can bet they allocated $5b/yr * 20 yrs of effort
                into getting something 10x better than hubble for close range. maybe a 1m meter * 6 in a ring. When there is no limit to a budget, and no slow managers involved, you can bet the NSA (10000+ math people) and the best grads can do better.

                Who knows maybe they beam down UV rays and inspect the result bouncing back or 25 ghz beams in combo with 1000 wavelengths.

                3mins of my time isn

      • We have satellites orbiting Earth that can read the numbers on a license plate and they can't get a good shot of the lander? Am I missing something here?
        Maybe we don't think there's license plates on Mars?

        Seriously though, what's the point of having ultra-high resolution pictures of Mars? Seeing each individual rock probbably isn't terribly usefull compared to other things the money could be used for. The CIA and NSA are obviously interested in high resolution pictures. NASA is interested in a wide range
        • We don't have the ability to fly those big honking things to Mars anyway, and the data bandwidth available wouldn't accomodate it anyway. It's much easier to put rovers on the ground.

          As it is, Malin's team can get sub-meter resolution on specific targets after a few passes.

        • My point was that they send these probes halfway across the inner solar system and they are using optics that can't see anything as large as a lander. Basically, they are saying that there is nothing that size that could possibly be of interest. Any indication to the contrary is hooted off the stage. And they insure that they won't be contradicted by their own observations because the probes they send are half blind.

          • Basically, they are saying that there is nothing that size that could possibly be of interest.
            I doubt Nasa would ever go quite that far. The thing you have to realize and what I was trying to point out is that there's always tradeoffs in any design. Spacecraft orbiting Mars has even bigger tradeoffs. Do you have the super-duper optics that can read a book in orbit (and blow all your money on it) or do you have multiple instruments, 3 more missions later on with very different goals, and optics that can s
      • We have satellites orbiting Earth that can read the numbers on a license plate and they can't get a good shot of the lander?

        I always get a laugh out of this assertion, because it's provably false regardless of the quality of the cameras. Orbital imaging sats take pics when they are as close as possible to the target and have the least amount of atmospheric interference-- i.e. when they are directly overhead or as close as they can get to directly overhead. Even if the satellites had fine enough resolution

  • Bloody mind tricks! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @05:48AM (#13834126) Journal
    We conclude that our interpretation of these features was in error.

    But you put forth some pretty darn convincing evidence! I recall an earlier Slashdot story that covered all this in detail, where you announc...

    This is not the location of the Mars Polar Lander.

    ...

    That was not the location of the Mars Polar Lander.

    Move along, move along!

  • Easy (Score:1, Redundant)

    by squoozer ( 730327 )

    The martians dragged it into a cave when they noticed it was drawing to much attention. Sheeeesh do these people know nothing.

  • List of Mars Efforts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EuropeanGuy ( 698760 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @05:51AM (#13834133)
    List of Mars Efforts, courtesy of Wikipedia

    Items with bullets represent full or partial failures.

    * 1960 -- Marsnik 1
    * 1960 -- Marsnik 2
    * 1962 -- Sputnik 29
    * 1962 -- Mars 1
    * 1962 -- Sputnik 31
    * 1964 -- Mariner 3
    1964 -- Mariner 4
    * 1964 -- Zond 2
    * 1965 -- Zond 3
    1969 -- Mariner 6
    1969 -- Mariner 7
    * 1969 -- Mars 1969A
    * 1969 -- Mars 1969B
    * 1971 -- Mariner 8
    * 1971 -- Cosmos 419
    * 1971 -- Mars 2
    1971 -- Mars 3
    1971 -- Mariner 9
    * 1973 -- Mars 4
    * 1973 -- Mars 5
    * 1973 -- Mars 6
    * 1973 -- Mars 7
    1975 -- Viking 1
    1975 -- Viking 2
    * 1988 -- Phobos 1
    * 1988 -- Phobos 2
    * 1992 -- Mars Observer
    1996 -- Mars Global Surveyor
    * 1996 -- Mars 96
    1996 -- Mars Pathfinder
    * 1998 -- Nozomi (Planet-B)
    * 1998 -- Mars Climate Orbiter
    * 1998 -- Mars Polar Lander
    * 1998 -- Deep Space 2 (part of Mars Polar Lander spacecraft)
    2001 -- Mars Odyssey
    2003 -- Mars Exploration Rovers
    * 2003 -- Mars Express

  • Hurry! (Score:5, Funny)

    by werewolf1031 ( 869837 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @06:12AM (#13834200)
    Click the randomly appearing Mars Polar Lander to win a Free iPod!

    Err, wait...

  • um (Score:4, Funny)

    by martin-boundary ( 547041 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @06:13AM (#13834204)
    Um, maybe I'm missing something, but have they checked for it on Google maps? I lost a black monolith once on the dark side of the moon, but it took all of two seconds to google for it. It was stuck in between some cheese.
  • If so, I suggest looking there. It's always behind the fridge.
  • It appears the Martians have their own Area 51, where they hide evidence of extra-marital life from their fellow martians.

  • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • These are not the droids you are looking for....
  • Maybe someone (and "the guys") took the lander to go pick up some power converters...

  • Incorrect (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Crixus ( 97721 )
    Is it really correct to say that it's lost again, since they never truly knew where it was?

  • Overheard (Score:3, Funny)

    by zr-rifle ( 677585 ) <zedr@@@zedr...com> on Thursday October 20, 2005 @08:36AM (#13834704) Homepage
    "Dude, where's my Polar Lander?"

  • Clarke warned us!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by blakespot ( 213991 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @09:43AM (#13835209) Homepage

    All these worlds are yours except Mars

    Attempt no polar landing there


    blakespot

  • Who doesn't love spending money looking for broken crap? Its like the ebay of space.
  • Sounds just like Bagdad Bob and Saddam, there is no Polar Lander, there never was a Polar Lander. Inspections for the Polar Lander have failed and are going nowhere. I say we gather a coalition of the willing and invade now to find all the Polar Landers, lest they be used against us!
  • the light is better there.
  • To the lay eye, it certainly appears that the initially identified location was questionable at best, because of the high levels of background noise. The few pixels of dark near the few pixels of light could, perhaps, have been a lander, but they also could have been just noise. Although the linked article doesn't mention this, there would be, I'd hope, a decent amount of statistical analysis to show that these pixels were a good 3+ sigma away from background. But by looking at it, you sure don't get that
  • These are not the mars exploration drones you are looking for.

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