NASA's Mars Polar Lander May Have Landed Safely

JabberBoi writes "On January 3, 1999, NASA lost contact with the Mars Polar Lander after it was supposed to land on Mars. An assessment report by NASA suggested that the lander's legs may have sent an incorrect signal to the craft's computer, which in turn caused a premature shutdown of its landing engines -- resulting in the craft crashing on Mars. However, according to this article from Space.com, analysis of images of the Polar Lander's assumed landing site area obtained by the Mars Global Explorer were sent to a U.S. 'spy' agency called the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) to determine if any signs of wreckage or the spacecraft could be discerned through pixel analysis. The article describes NIMA as an 'acclaimed leader in describing, assessing, and visually depicting physical features on Earth' from imagery taken by spy satellites. NIMA's report states that the images they analyzed suggest a successful landing based on identification of three separate parts of the Mars Polar Lander: an upright Polar Lander, and two 'pixel return' signatures that suggest the lander's parachute and heat shield. These findings suggest that something else may have caused the Polar Lander mission to fail. Conspiracy theories about why the Polar Lander never called home abound."