Mars Lander Begins Quest to Find Water

A Mars lander equipped with a robot arm and shovel rocketed away Sunday on a 470-million-mile quest to uncover frozen water near the planet’s South Pole.

NASA’s Mars Polar Lander took off aboard a Boeing rocket at 3:21 p.m. The rain that managers had feared stayed away, allowing NASA to use the launch window despite an overcast sky.

Less than an hour later, the final rocket motor fired, kicking the Polar Lander out of Earth’s orbit and putting it on an 11-month course for Mars. Launch managers cheered and applauded.

“My birthday is tomorrow, and this is just about the best birthday present I’ve ever had,” said project scientist Richard Zurek, who is turning 52. “Right now, I’m feeling a lot younger than that.”

The Polar Lander is bound for the frosty fringes of Mars’ south polar cap. It’s due to arrive in December when it’s late spring and the sun never sets.

It will be virgin territory: No spacecraft has ever ventured so far south on Mars. As a result, scientists’ expectations are high.

Their goal is to find water ice in the Martian soil. Where there’s water, NASA’s top space scientist says, there could be life.

“You’ve got to follow the water if you’re looking for life,” said Ed Weiler, head of NASA’s space science division.

“We have a lot of reason to believe there’s water on Mars in the form of ice,” he added. “But until you actually land there and find it and measure it, you can’t say for sure. That’s one thing I think this mission will demonstrate.”

The Polar Lander--3 1/2 feet tall and 12 feet wide--has three legs as well as a 6 1/2-foot robot arm with a scoop on the end to scrape beneath the Martian surface. The collected dirt will be heated, allowing any water that’s present to vaporize and be detected by a laser.

It carries no life-detection equipment. The only real way to confirm life on Mars, Weiler says, is to fetch rocks and soil. NASA plans to launch a soil-return mission in 2005; the samples would reach Earth in 2008.