Unlike the output of a 100-watt light bulb, 100 watts of ultrahigh frequencies in the microwave band are maximally absorbed by human tissue, with the result that long-term low-level exposure has been implicated in increases in breast cancer, leukemia, cataracts, immune suppression, and brain tumors.
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The lander was designed to transmit on that frequency in regular communications with the Mars Global Surveyor, a craft now orbiting Mars and listening for the vanished spacecraft . So the space agency decided it made sense to try to scan those ultrahigh frequencies from Earth as well.
