O-> O-> O-> O-> O-> O-> O-> O-> O-> O-> O-> O-> O-> O-> O-> O->

      THE INTERNATIONAL MARSWATCH ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER
      -------------------------------------------------
                     Volume 5; Issue 1
                       Dec 14, 1999
                     Circulation: 1578

<-O <-O <-O <-O <-O <-O <-O <-O <-O <-O <-O <-O <-O <-O <-O <-O

Dear Marsphiles,

This short newsletter comes to you to let you know that Marswatch
is still going strong.  Our circulation continues to increase,
implying that interest in Mars continues to grow.  We are
all preparing for the upcoming Mars observing season, with the
opposition event itself in mid-June 2001.  Work is afoot to
create another WWW site where observers will be able to upload
their images for others to see and use.  At the bottom of this
newsletter are the URL's of the previous oppositions' sites.

With this short intro I'll add that there are two topics for
this issue of the newsletter:

(1) New editor of Marswatch Newsletter
(2) Latest on Mars Polar Lander

-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-

Hi all, I am Dave Klassen at Rowan University and I will be
taking over from Jim Bell as the editor of the Marswatch
Electronic Newsletter.  Jim has done a wonderful job keeping
this newsletter going since its inception back in January 1994.
His work at coordinating all the messages, especially during the
opposition times to help us all on our own observations, has
been invaluable and I'm sure you all join me in thanking him
for his efforts (Thanks Jim!).

Unfortunately (for us) his duties related to HST Mars observing
and work with the various Mars related spacecraft as well as his
teaching/advising of students at Cornell have left him little
time to continue leading his ground-based observing projects.  I
have been working with Jim since the 1995 opposition and have
continued in his footsteps with the ground-based near-infrared
Mars observing program.

I hope that in the months to come I can do as well serving the Mars
community with this newsletter as Jim did.

-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-

Let me first say that I do not have any kind of "insider" information
and in fact, the most current information is to be found at the
MPL web site at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/index.html (which
is from where the following was compiled).

On 3 Dec 99 the Mars Polar Lander was supposed to land in the
southern polar regions of Mars and begin its investigation of
martian water.  The two Deep Space 2 probes were to jettison off
the lander, slam into the surface and drill for subsurface water.
The experiments on the lander would have measured the amounts of
water and carbon-dioxide in the air around the landing site,
measure a wealth of weather information, and used LIDAR to measure
the clouds over the lander.  Of course, we would also have been
amazed at the volume of images from the stereo imager akin to
those we received from the Mars Pathfinder.

However, as we all know, there was no signal from the lander or
either of the Deep Space 2 probes.  As of 10 Dec (last update of
the WWW site) there is little hope for contact, although all efforts
have not yet ended.  Plans are underway to have the Mars Global
Surveyor attempt to image the site.

Although the mission was unable to complete its primary objective,
the mission did not end, as the mass media keep saying, with the
"loss of the $165 million probe".  I would venture to guess (since
I have been unable to find any hard numbers) that the actual
value of the hardware lost is at most in the tens of millions
of dollars.  A good portion of the mission costs was in the launch
vehicle, research and development of the imaging systems, the weather
sensors, the robotics, and the other instrumentation.  Even if these
pieces of hardware are lost to us, we have gained experience in creating
it all in an inexpensive and lightweight format for space travel.
The teams have also gained experience in designing instrumentation
which will answer the questions they have formulated.  All of this
is worthwhile science and engineering - helping to temper the loss
of the hardware itself.

In light of these two most recent losses, I hope we can all keep
focused on the successes of NASA (Pathfinder, MGS, and Chadra just
to name the latest few) especially considering the ever tightening
budget restrictions placed on them.

				- Dave

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Marswatch WWW sites:
	http://www.astroleague.org/marswatch/
	http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/mpf/marswatch.html
	http://astrosun.tn.cornell.edu/marsnet/mnhome.html

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Questions, comments, concerns, and contributions to:
David R. Klassen                             voice: 856-256-4500 x3273
Department of Chemistry & Physics              fax: 856-256-4478
Rowan University
201 Mullica Hill Road                        klassen@rowan.edu
Glassboro, NJ 08028                          http://elvis.rowan.edu/~klassen