Explanation: The latest invader from Earth, the Mars Polar Lander (MPL) spacecraft, is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet's surface on Friday, December 3rd. If all goes well the robotic explorer will open a parachute, deploy landing legs, fire thrusters, and come to rest amidst rolling plains of intriguing layered terrain near the Martian South Pole. In this orbital image, a grid overlays the landing region with the targeted site indicated by a purple oval about 200 kilometers long by 20 kilometers wide. A secondary landing site is shown as a white oval while at the upper left an inset shows the area in relation to the pole. This polar landing region's layered terrain will hopefully allow MPL's instruments to view a record of climate changes in Martian history, like reading tree rings or layers in an ice core. Before landing, MPL will drop off two microprobes intended to penetrate the soil and look for water ice. Mars Polar Lander will also carry a small Mars Microphone.
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"If all goes well [...]"
Reader, it did not go well.
the Failure Review Board concluded that the most likely cause of the mishap was a software error that incorrectly identified vibrations, caused by the deployment of the stowed legs, as surface touchdown. The resulting action by the spacecraft was the shutdown of the descent engines, while still likely 40 meters above the surface. Although it was known that leg deployment could create the false indication, the software's design instructions did not account for that eventuality.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Polar_Lander#Loss_of_communications)