Word: martian
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...point A to any cosmic point B is like leading ducks when you're hunting," says TIME senior writer Jeffrey Kluger, coauthor of the book "Apollo 13." "You can't aim for where a planet is, you have to aim for where it's going to be." With a Martian year lasting roughly two of our years, missing the rendezvous means you have a while to wait before the motion of the two bodies coincides again. "If an error of one degree magnifies to many degrees when traveling on the ocean," says Kluger, "imagine what it's like in space...
...spindly machine standing 3.5 ft. tall, the lander is set to arrive in December 1999, aiming to touch down near Mars' south pole, one of the few spots on the freeze-dried planet that is likely to contain some water. Just before reaching the Martian atmosphere, the lander will release a pair of tapered pods, each about the size of a basketball, made of brittle silica. Plunging ahead of the ship, the projectiles will free-fall to the surface and strike the ground at 400 m.p.h...
...pods are designed to shatter on impact, releasing a pair of 7-in. probes. Slamming into the surface, the probes are supposed to drive themselves 4 ft. into the Martian crust. Once buried, they will deploy tiny drills and begin sampling the chemical makeup of the soil around them. Scientists believe that chemistry could be remarkably rich. "The surface of Mars has been pretty well sterilized by ultraviolet radiation," says Sam Thurman, the mission's flight-operations manager. The subsurface has been spared that scrubbing...
...ground, the lander will follow, descending by parachute and braking engine. Bristling with cameras and sensors, it will study Mars' terrain and weather, snapping pictures both during its descent and on the surface. It will also carry a microphone to record for the first time the sound of the Martian wind. More important, the ship will be equipped with a robotic arm and scoop, much like the arms carried aboard the Viking landers in the 1970s. Unlike the Vikings, though, which were able to paw just a few feeble inches into the Martian topsoil, the new ship will gouge...
...probes, powered by batteries, should wink out within three days. The lander, with robust solar panels to keep it humming, could last three months. But even if the systems do not survive that long, their work could be profound. After all, scientists have spent years studying just the Martian skin; this will be their first chance to dig a little deeper...