MGS finds Viking Lander 2 and Mars Polar Lander (maybe)

One of the more interesting and appealing activities of the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) observational objectives identified in the original 1985 Mars Observer proposal was to image landers on the martian surface. The scientific goal of this objective is to place the landers into their geologic context, which in turn helps the science community to better understand the results from the landers.

In addition to this, the MOC team believed that it would be "really neat" to see the landers sitting on the surface. In previous releases, the MOC team have shown images of Viking Lander 1, Mars Pathfinder, and the two Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. To this group of landers Viking Lander 2 (VL-2) can now be added with certainty, the location of which has been uncertain by many kilometers for nearly 30 years.

The MOC team also believe they have found a candidate for the location of the Mars Polar Lander, which failed without a trace on 3 December 1999. For this candidate Mars Polar Lander site the MOC team will attempt with a compensated pitch and roll technique known as "cPROTO" to obtain an image of about 0.5 meters per pixel (allowing objects approximately 1.5-2.5 meters in size to be resolved) during southern summer this year.

Read more and view images in MGS MOC Release of 5 May 2005.
Mars Global Surveyor was launched in November 1996 and has been in Mars orbit since September 1997. It began its primary mapping mission on March 8, 1999. Mars Global Surveyor is the first mission in a long-term program of Mars exploration known as the Mars Surveyor Program that is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena, CA and Denver, CO.