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Mission record

Mars Polar Lander

Also known as MPL, Mars Surveyor '98 Lander, MarsPolarLander

NASA-Office of Space Science · Launched

Explore trajectory

Lost · Failure

The Mars Surveyor '98 program is comprised of two spacecraft launched separately, the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander, designed to study the Martian weather, climate, and water and carbon dioxide budget in order to understand the reservoirs, behavior, and atmospheric role of volatiles and to search for evidence of long-term and episodic climate changes. The Mars Polar Lander was to touch down on the southern polar layered terrain, between 73 S and 76 S, less than 1000 km from the south pole, near the edge of the carbon dioxide ice cap in Mars' late southern spring. The last telemetry from Mars Polar Lander was sent just prior to atmospheric entry on 3 December 1999. No further signals have been received from the lander, the cause of this loss of communication is not known.

Destinations
Launch vehicle
Delta II 7425
Launch site
Cape Canaveral, United States
Countries
United States
Mission types
Lander

Chronology

Mission timeline

  1. Launch

    Launched on a Delta II 7425 with the Deep Space 2 probes

    NSSDCA's launch/orbital information page gives the launch date and time as 1999-01-03T20:21:10Z, a 191 km circular parking orbit from 20:33:00 to 20:57:00, and an interplanetary cruise about the Sun from 20:57:00. Mars Polar Lander and the attached Deep Space 2 probes were launched on a Delta 7425 (a Delta II Lite launch vehicle with four strap-on solid-rocket boosters and a Star 48 (PAM-D) third stage) which placed them into a low-Earth parking orbit; the third stage fired for 88 seconds at 20:57 UT 3 January 1999 to put the spacecraft into a Mars transfer trajectory and the spacecraft and third stage separated at 21:03 UT.

    Earth

  2. Loss of contact

    Last telemetry sent just prior to atmospheric entry

    The last telemetry from Mars Polar Lander was sent just prior to atmospheric entry on 3 December 1999. No further signals have been received from the lander, the cause of this loss of communication is not known. Because the page states that due to lack of communication it is not known whether the steps following final contact were executed, nor whether any of the descent plan took place as designed, this record commits no landing.

    Mars

Mission architecture

Vehicles

  • Mars Polar Lander · Lander

    Destinations: Mars

Trajectory record

Trajectory dataset not yet available

No verified trajectory dataset is committed for this mission, so Mission Atlas renders no path.

Provenance

Sources

Each source is listed once and labeled with the mission, event, trajectory, or destination/body context it supports.

Data verified through September 2, 2026