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Looking for Mars' secrets

Alok Jha

Mars Climate Orbiter may send back much more information than all other probes combined

London: On Friday night, the most advanced space probe ever was expected to complete its 480 million-km, seven-month journey and slip into orbit around Mars. If all goes well, that is: until early morning Saturday, Indian time, nervous scientists huddled around computer screens were hoping that the Martian curse, which has doomed so many missions to the planet, would not strike again.

They hope the Mars Climate Orbiter will send back 10 times more information on our near neighbour than all the other Mars probes put together. Its high-resolution cameras will map the planet's dusty surface in incredible detail, helping NASA work out where to land robotic rovers and scout locations for possible human landing sites. The Mars Climate Sounder experiment that sits on the probe, designed and built by astronomers from three British universities, has been in the works for 25 years. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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