On Jan. 3, 1999, NASA launched an ambitious spacecraft named Mars Polar Lander. As the name suggests, its main objective was to land at the south pole of Mars and dig for water ice via a robotic arm.
Mars Polar Lander had four main instruments: a microphone, a volatiles and climate surveyor, or MVACS, a LIDAR, and a descent imager. MVACS was a package consisting of a robotic arm and camera along with a camera and gas analyzer. The Mars descent imager, or MARDI, was to take aerial photographs while landing.
The LIDAR was provided to NASA from the Russian Space Agency that was to be put to use measuring dust and haze. The craft also had two other probes called Deep Space 2 riding on top of it. These two smaller probes planned to penetrate the Martian surface, but, of course, they were also lost.
In addition to probing the South Pole, it was tasked with recording meteorological data while there, such as haze, temperature, ground frost, pressure, and humidity, for example. It was also planned to analyze polar deposits for water and carbon dioxide, image the immediate landing site for signs of changes in the Martian climate, and dig trenches to investigate seasonal layers and search for water and ice.
Contact with the craft was lost in December of 1999 upon arrival to Mars. It would have been the first to land on one of Mars’ poles.
Three months later, NASA announced the results of an internal investigation. The most likely cause of the failure was an unexpected signal when the lander legs were deployed during descent. That told the spacecraft, prematurely, that it had landed, and brought about a shutdown of the engines. However, without the telemetry data, NASA said it will never know for sure whether the probe reached the descent propulsion phase.
This information was gathered from nasa.gov.
