"We're discouraged, but determined," said JPL's Richard Cook, project manager of Mars Polar Lander operations. "Cross anything that you've got two of for luck," added Carl Pilcher, NASA's science director for solar system exploration.
To date, however, every contact attempt to hear from the lander and microprobes has been met with deaf mute silence. A monitor that depicts electronic signals emitted by the lander from the martian surface shows all the flat-lined life of a dead hospital patient.
If the mystique of Mars claims yet another victim -- some 20 U.S. and Russian missions have now failed or were just partially successful -- the chances of a major restructuring of robotic Mars exploration appears in the offing. Work is well underway for the Mars Surveyor 2001, which includes an orbiter, lander and rover. Following that mission set, return sample spacecraft are on tap for launch to Mars starting in 2003, and then again in the 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2013 time periods.
"If we don't hear from the lander, I think it's clear that there will be a reexamination of the program and the timetable of the things that we are doing," said Mark Adler, JPL's chief engineer for the Mars Sample Return Program. "The timing would change, as would the way we apply and validate our technologies," he said.
Similar in thought is Donna Shirley, assistant dean for Advanced Program Development at the University of Oklahoma's College of Engineering in Norman, Oklahoma. A 32-year JPL veteran, Shirley last headed the lab's Mars Program. She was also the original leader of the team that built the Sojourner mini-rover, carried to the red planet on-board the 1997 Mars Pathfinder mission.
Shirley said her personal view is that the Mars exploration schedule is far too tight, constrained by money with teams of talented people stretched out over too many Mars missions.
"The whole thing is just too tight," Shirley told space.com. "It's a gloomy picture."
NASA -- along with the space agency's Mars spacecraft builder, Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, Colorado -- need to have a heart-to-heart talk with their respective space engineers about what is feasible given available funding, Shirley said. "If I were queen, I would sit down and ask the engineers what is realistic, and then believe them when they tell you what they can do for the money."
Regarding the econo-class type of cheaper, better, faster robotic Mars strategy now in place, Shirley said: "If you don't give it any money, then you don't ask it to do much. And if you ask it to do a lot, you give it a lot of money."
An early worry given a loss of the Mars Polar Lander is the design of the Mars Surveyor 2001 lander. It borrows heavily from the design of the now lost-on-Mars lander. "The idea was to make the 2001 lander as close as possible to the Mars Polar Lander," said Noel Hinners, vice president, Flight Systems, Lockheed Martin Astronautics. The aerospace firm built both the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander.
Not knowing the exact fate of the Mars Polar Lander -- specifically, what events took place as it plunged through the martian atmosphere and headed for a touch down -- adds to the frustration of moving forward on subsequent Mars missions, Hinners said.
"It's one of the aspects of faster, better, cheaper. With the cost constraints, one of the things you cut back on is engineering data. You are in a blackout period and have no idea what is happening from entry to landing," Hinners said.
Hinners said that the 2001 lander is too far along to make changes, whereas the 2003 and 2005 lander missions could accept engineering fixes. But such changes would cost money and not come for free, he said.
"The real emphasis will be to try and understand as best we can what went wrong and apply those lessons to the next set," said JPL's Richard Zurek, Mars Polar Lander project scientist. "But that is difficult because the launch opportunities are just a couple of years apart.
The [spacecraft] build schedules are longer than that. You almost have to skip [a mission set] to really get the benefits...or you have to delay a mission," he said.
advertisement
