Based on the Phoenix lander, the craft is tasked with giving us a peek beneath the planet's surface, armed with tools that include a geodetic instrument from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which will be used to calculate Mars' rotation axis, a seismic wave sensor and a subsurface heat probe, to measure the planet's internal temperature.

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This passion for technology is starting to surface in what employees expect from the tools they use at work.

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And that case has been bolstered yet again, as scientists studying images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a satellite that takes pictures of the Martian surface from orbit using a variety of different tools.

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The satellite built in collaboration with France will carry two climate tools developed for analysing ocean current and sea surface heights by the French space agency CNES, reports say.

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Put them in the same category of logging tools that burned up the first time they were used before they could bring useful information to the surface.

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