Word: lander
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...silence is deafening: Two days after the Mars Polar Lander was supposed to have touched down and started sending back signals from the Red Planet's south pole, and still there is no word. The possibilities: The craft could have gone into a protective sleep mode after impact, and has so far missed its window of opportunity for transmission back to Earth. It's also conceivable that the probe landed on its side, making a clear transmission path even more difficult. The possibility that NASA doesn't want to think about yet is that the craft didn't survive...
Fortunately, for NASA, the second time's the charm - or so it seems. On Friday, the space agency's engineers celebrated the fact that, as far as they could tell, the second of their two $100 million Martian landers didn't get lost in space. All indications were that the Mars Polar Lander enjoyed a safe touchdown at right around its scheduled landing time, 3:01 p.m. EST. But NASA failed to receive a signal from the craft during the first 20-minute communications window, beginning around 3:40 p.m. The Lander is the partner craft to the Mars Climate...
...comes the wait for the data. By landing at the planet's south pole, the Polar Lander will be able to sample one of the likeliest spots to find traces of water on the planet, and where there's H20 there could be life. But the real fun starts Saturday, when we get a planetary first: Mars wired for sound. If everything works as planned, a small, cheap microphone placed on the lander by the Planetary Society will begin streaming the sounds of the Red Planet to a web page near you. Which if nothing else means next time...
...their weight translates into higher launch costs. Bar-Cohen says the components required to construct each strip of artificial muscle cost a total of $200, need just four volts of power and weigh only a fraction of an ounce. Says Rob Manning, chief engineer for nasa's Mars Lander missions: "With all of our basketball-sized spacecraft, we're going to need this kind of technology...
...ambitious undertaking, but NASA has succeeded in meeting challenges like this in the past." Until the plane mission lifts off, NASA is putting its eggs in two more conventional modes of exploring the planet: Within the year, a polar orbiter will be surveying Mars and a lander will arrive to study what lies beneath its surface. Martians, beware: The Earthlings are coming, the Earthlings are coming...