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37. Mars Surveyor '98 Lander

37. Mars Surveyor '98 Lander

The second mission in the Mars Surveyor series includes the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander. Both were built by Lockheed Martin Astronautics. Launched in December 1998, the lander should touch down on the perimeter of the martian south polar cap in December 1999.

The landing site is composed of alternating layers of dust and ice — the layered terrain. Just like ice cores from Greenland or Antarctica, this layered terrain could give scientists a top-to-bottom synopsis of the geological history of Mars, providing significant information about earlier, wetter times.

The lander has a weather station and a 2-meter-long robot arm for collecting samples and digging holes about a meter deep. These deep holes will allow Surveyor to collect samples from below the oxidizing material at Mars’ surface. A soil composition analyzer, the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA), will tell the compositions of the soils and ice in them.

Lockheed Martin Astronautics

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