Spy-agency analysts may have spotted a missing Mars probe thought to have crashed more than a year ago on the planet after the premature shutdown of its landing rocket.

However, Web news site Space.com reports that imaging experts at the federal National Imagery and Mapping Agency think they have spotted the missing Mars Polar Lander "intact on the surface, sitting atop its trio of landing legs."

Spokeswoman Jennifer Lafley called the report "basically correct" but said her agency and NASA needed more time to confirm the find.

"The report is preliminary in terms of its findings," says Don Savage, NASA spokesman. "Word has gotten out before all questions have been answered."

Experts from Malin Space Science Systems operate the camera aboard the Global Surveyor orbiter. The mapping agency is relying upon those pictures for its analysis and will review evidence with help from other Mars experts in coming weeks, Savage said.

The lander disappeared Dec. 3, 1999, as it headed for a landing site near Mars' South Pole.

A review board later concluded that as the craft's landing gear opened a few hundred feet above the landing site, a software glitch shut down its braking rocket. NASA eventually declared the craft a loss.

The space agency spent last February chasing a faint radio signal that might have come from the probe but concluded it was a false signal.

The mapping agency interprets space-reconnaissance images for national-security agencies.

Seattle Times

I remember that they first claimed that it was a
problem in meausuring systems. Aparently that was
a red herring.

-- Anonymous, March 22, 2001