The bright spot in this 2007 image taken by NASA's Mars Orbiter spacecraft may be the parachute from a 1971 Soviet mission that soft landed a spacecraft on the Red Planet. Credit: NASA JPL\/University of Arizona <\/p>\n
MOSCOW, April 12 (UPI) -- Russian space enthusiasts say a NASA orbiter may have captured images of pieces of a Soviet spacecraft that made a soft landing on Mars more than 40 years ago. <\/p>\n
They say the evidence of the Mars 3 mission, the first successful soft landing on the Red Planet, is in images taken in 2007 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. <\/p>\n
NASA reported their claims Friday. <\/p>\n
\"While following news about Mars and NASA's Curiosity rover, Russian citizen enthusiasts found four features in a 5-year-old image from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that resemble four pieces of hardware from the Soviet Mars 3 mission: the parachute, heat shield, terminal retrorocket and lander,\" the space agency said. <\/p>\n
The Soviet space mission made a soft landing on Mars Dec. 2, 1971, and sent data back to Earth for 14.5 seconds before the transmissions stopped abruptly, RIA Novosti reported. <\/p>\n
Russian space follower Vitali Egorov saw an image taken by NASA's orbiter of the crater where Mars 3 was believed to have landed, and recruited members of an online community that follows NASA's Curiosity rover to look for objects in the image that matched the Mars 3 equipment. <\/p>\n
Alfred McEwen, principal investigator of the University of Arizona's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on the orbiter, was asked to analyze a follow-up image of Mars 3's landing site, and said the objects identified by the Russians could be the real thing. <\/p>\n
\"The parachute, which is seen as an especially bright spot, was the most distinctive and unusual feature in the images,\" he told RIA Novosti. <\/p>\n
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NASA spacecraft may have spotted pieces of Soviet spacecraft on Mars<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The bright spot in this 2007 image taken by NASA's Mars Orbiter spacecraft may be the parachute from a 1971 Soviet mission that soft landed a spacecraft on the Red Planet. Credit: NASA JPL\/University of Arizona MOSCOW, April 12 (UPI) -- Russian space enthusiasts say a NASA orbiter may have captured images of pieces of a Soviet spacecraft that made a soft landing on Mars more than 40 years ago. They say the evidence of the Mars 3 mission, the first successful soft landing on the Red Planet, is in images taken in 2007 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Continue reading