NASA Launch Commentator: "3.2.1. we have ignition
and we have liftoff of NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter as we continue to explore the
mysteries of the Red Planet."
On December 11. 1998. NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter was launched from
Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 1:45 pm. Eastern Time.
Riding atop a Boeing Delta II rocket. the satellite spent the next nine months travelling to
the Red Planet.
Mars Climate Orbiter was the first of a pair of spacecraft launched separately in the Mars
Surveyor '98 Project.
The satellite's first order of business upon arrival at Mars was to provide support to its
companion spacecraft. Mars Polar Lander.
The pair were sent to study the Martian weather. climate. and the water and carbon
dioxide budget. Mars Climate Orbiter was designed to function as an interplanetary
weather satellite and a communications relay for Mars Polar Lander.
Unfortunately. the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft failed to achieve orbit around Mars.
Contact with the satellite was lost on arrival on September 23. 1999. Engineers concluded
that the spacecraft entered the planet's atmosphere too low and probably burned up.