English: "The Mars Polar Lander is shown on the surface of Mars.

The spacecraft will travel 10 months from Earth to Mars to land near the southern polar cap in December 1999 and carry out a three- month mission to search for traces of subsurface water in this frozen, layered terrain. The lander carries three scientific packages: the Mars descent imager, furnished by Malin Space Science Systems, Inc., which will view the landing site at increasingly higher resolution; the atmospheric lidar experiment, provided by Russia's Space Research Institute, which will measure the presence and height of atmospheric hazes, along with a miniature microphone provided by The Planetary Society, to record the sounds of Mars; and the Mars Volatile and Climate Surveyor science package. The mission is part of NASA's Mars Surveyor program, a sustained program of robotic exploration of the red planet, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Lockheed Martin

Astronautics is NASA's industrial partner in the mission."[1]