Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander
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Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander was a planned NASA Mars probe which was cancelled in May 2000 in the wake of the failures of the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander missions in late 1999. The Lander's companion spacecraft Mars Surveyor 2001 Orbiter, renamed 2001 Mars Odyssey, was launched and went into orbit about Mars on October 24, 2001.
The 2001 Surveyor lander spacecraft was built under contract to NASA by the Lockheed Martin corporation. The basic lander design is identical to that of the Mars Polar Lander, which had been intended to be the first of a series of low-cost "Mars Surveyor" landers sent to Mars. Prior to mission cancellation, cost overruns and technical problems caused the Lander design to be rescoped, and the planned large Athena rover was replaced by a small rover duplicating the Sojourner which was a part of the Mars Pathfinder mission. The Athena did later make it to Mars, however, with two such rovers making up the Mars Exploration Rover Mission of 2004. The second of these, MER-B Opportunity, landed at Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander's target site, Meridiani Planum.
The 2001 Surveyor lander was also intended to carry to Mars a test payload, MIP (Mars ISPP Precursor), that was to demonstrate manufacure of oxygen from the atmosphere of Mars, as well as test solar cell technologies and methods of mitigating the effect of Martian dust on the power systems.
The Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander itself was kept in storage and then used as the lander on the Phoenix mission; it is currently on Mars in the north polar region. The Phoenix lander has on board three instruments that were originally built for the Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander:
- the Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA);
- the never-used Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) camera;
- the Robotic Arm, which was modified for the Phoenix mission.
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