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© NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of ArizonaPromising candidates for pieces of the 42-year-old Mars-3 probe were located by a group of Russian space enthusiasts
A group of Russian space enthusiasts may have found the location of the first space probe ever to land on Mars, the 42-year-old Mars-3.

In a post Thursday, NASA highlighted pictures taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter near the location of the Curiosity rover.

"In 1971, the former Soviet Union launched the Mars 2 and Mars 3 missions to Mars. Each consisted of an orbiter plus a lander," NASA said. "Both orbiter missions succeeded, although the surface of Mars was obscured by a planet-encircling dust storm. The Mars 2 lander crashed. Mars 3 became the first successful soft landing on the Red Planet, but stopped transmitting after just 14.5 seconds for unknown reasons."

The Russian group, which comes together online as a Mars Curiosity Rover community, started searching through images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Through crowdsourcing, it wasn't long until they found something.

Vitali Egorov, the head of the community, "modelled what Mars 3 hardware pieces should look like in a HiRISE image, and the group carefully searched the many small features in this large image, finding what appear to be viable candidates in the southern part of the scene," NASA said. "Each candidate has a size and shape consistent with the expected hardware, and they are arranged on the surface as expected from the entry, descent and landing sequence."

The image focuses on three possible parts of Mars-3, the parachute, the retro-rockets and lander and the heat shield.

The image in question highlights "candidates" for all of these pieces. NASA says that of the three, the parachute candidate is the one that stands out the most as an anomaly on the landscape.

"The candidate parachute is the most distinctive and unusual feature in the images," NASA explains. "It is an especially bright spot for this region, about 8.2 yards (7.5 meters) in diameter. The parachute would have a diameter of 12 yards (11 meters) if fully spread out over the surface, so this is consistent."

The agency goes on to explain that overall between the three "candidates" found, there is a "remarkable match" to what would be expected from the site of the Mars-3, however, "alternative explanations for the features cannot be ruled out."

Unlike on the Moon, where Earth objects can stay unchanged for years, objects on Mars would be constantly shifted around by weather effects.