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NASA Gives Up Search for Lost Mars Lander
posted: 09:28 am ET
17 January 2000
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NASA Gives Up Search for Lost Mars Lander NASA ended on Monday a six-week, intermittent search for its latest Mars mission that was to land on the red planet's surface on Dec. 3 but instead fell out of contact minutes before touchdown. Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) made a series of attempts this weekend to listen for blips from the spacecraft, which mission managers believe landed on Mars but was unable to communicate for an unknown reason. A last-ditch set of commands was sent to the $165-million Mars Polar Lander on January 6. "Since then, we've had a series of relay communications sessions using Mars Global Surveyor to listen for the lander around the clock," Project Manager Richard Cook said in a prepared statement. "These attempts have ended today concluding our attempts to recover the spacecraft," he said. JPL stopped listening at 11 a.m. Eastern Standard TIme. Polar Lander was to land near the planet's south pole for a study of Mars' water history. Detailed information on possible water in the martian soil and what caused layered terrain to pile up beneath the surface could provide clues the question of life at Mars. Since December 3, engineers have tried on numerous occasions to contact Polar Lander, testing out various theories as to what went wrong, but to no avail. Meanwhile, a NASA review board has started investigating the spacecraft's loss, as well as the loss of a previous orbiter which fell out of contact just as it arrived at Mars in September. That mishap was attributed to human error and mismanagement, including a mismatch of metric and English units in navigation commands sent to the spacecraft. NASA's lone spacecraft at Mars -- Global Surveyor -- will continue to sweep the planet's surface in search of a spot that could mark the site of the lost lander or its parachute. So far, no signs of the lander have turned up and the agency will continue to search for it through early February. In the interim, Global Surveyor engineers will try to figure out any hazards near the presumed landing site that could have doomed Polar Lander and turn that information over the review board.
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