Artist's conception of the Mars Surveyor 2001
Click on image for full size
Image courtesy of JPL/NASA

Field trip to Mars?
News story originally written on March 26, 1999

The Planetary Society is sponsoring a project called A 2001 Mars Odyssey: The Student NanoExperiment Challenge. It is a contest to give students from across the world a chance to send a science experiment to Mars. The experiment will fly aboard the Mars Surveyor 2001 spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch on April 10, 2001.

The contest is only open to pre-college students who are 18 years old or younger as of March 1, 1999. The experiment must be small enough to fit in a one centimeter high by one centimeter diameter cylinder. It also has to weigh less than three grams. The results of the experiment must be able to be seen by the lander's camera.

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