The NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

 Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander was a planned Mars

Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...

 probe which was canceled in May 2000 in the wake of the failures of the Mars Climate Orbiter

Mars Climate Orbiter

The Mars Climate Orbiter was a 338 kilogram robotic space probe launched by NASA on December 11, 1998 to study the Martian climate, atmosphere, surface changes and to act as the communications relay in the Mars Surveyor '98 program, for Mars Polar Lander...

 and Mars Polar Lander

Mars Polar Lander

The Mars Polar Lander, also referred to as the Mars Surveyor '98 Lander, was a 290-kilogram robotic spacecraft lander, launched by NASA on January 3, 1999, to study the soil and climate of Planum Australe, a region near the south pole on Mars, as part of the Mars Surveyor '98 mission...

 missions in late 1999. The Lander was a component of the Mars Surveyor 2001

Mars Surveyor 2001

The Mars Surveyor 2001 project was a multi-part Mars exploration mission intended as a follow-up to Mars Surveyor 1998. After the two probes of the 1998 project, Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander, were both lost, NASA's "better, faster, cheaper" exploration philosophy was re-evaluated,...

project, and its companion spacecraft Mars Surveyor 2001 Orbiter, renamed 2001 Mars Odyssey

2001 Mars Odyssey

2001 Mars Odyssey is a robotic spacecraft orbiting the planet Mars. The project was developed by NASA, and contracted out to Lockheed Martin, with an expected cost for the entire mission of US$297 million. Its mission is to use spectrometers and electronic imagers to hunt for evidence of past or...

, 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

Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin is an American global aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technology company with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, in the Washington Metropolitan Area....

 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

Mars Rover

A Mars rover is an automated motor vehicle which propels itself across the surface of the planet Mars after landing.Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny positions to...

 was replaced by a small rover duplicating the Sojourner which was a part of the Mars Pathfinder

Mars Pathfinder

Mars Pathfinder was an American spacecraft that landed a base station with roving probe on Mars in 1997. It consisted of a lander, renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, and a lightweight wheeled robotic rover named Sojourner.Launched on December 4, 1996 by NASA aboard a Delta II booster a...

 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

Meridiani Planum

Meridiani Planum is a plain located 2 degrees south of Mars' equator , in the westernmost portion of Terra Meridiani. It hosts a rare occurrence of gray crystalline hematite...

.

The 2001 Surveyor lander was also intended to carry to Mars a test payload, MIP (Mars ISPP Precursor), that was to demonstrate manufacture of oxygen

Oxygen

Oxygen is the element with atomic number 8 and represented by the symbol O. Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς and -γενής , because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition...

 from the atmosphere of Mars, as well as test solar cell

Solar cell

A solar cell is a solid state electrical device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect....

 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

Phoenix (spacecraft)

Phoenix was a robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission on Mars under the Mars Scout Program. The Phoenix lander descended on Mars on May 25, 2008...

 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.

External links

• NSSDC Master Catalog entry
• Workshop on Mars 2001: Integrated Science in Preparation for Sample Return and Human Exploration (papers describing mission and experiments) (11 M pdf)
• MIP Experiment summary, presented at Lunar and Planetary Science XXX, Houston, TX (1999).