A rchive Date
[ 17-01-2004 ]
Category
[ Science ]
sub-Categoy
[ Astronomy ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSSpace0001/16_lander.html
Controllers to abandon search for Mars Polar Lander
By MATTHEW FORDAHL -- Associated Press
Sunday, January 16, 2000
PASADENA, Calif. -- The fruitless search for any sign of life from NASA's Mars Polar Lander will be abandoned Monday, ending any hope that the $165 million mission to the Red Planet can be saved.
The three-legged lander was to have touched down Dec. 3 for a 90-day mission near Mars' south pole to study the atmosphere and dig for ice. It was last heard from minutes before beginning its descent.
Instead of reveling in new pictures and science, controllers have been methodically testing different scenarios to explain the silence.
Their last attempt ends at 8 a.m. PST Monday, said Richard Cook, the lander's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"In a way, we feel somewhat complete in the sense that we did go through the things we thought were reasonable," he said. "Obviously at this point none of that panned out, but we gave it a good shot."
Investigators will continue to seek an explanation for the failure and have launched a review of the Mars program, which also lost an orbiter in September.
Another lander and orbiter are set to be launched next year, but at least part of the mission is now in doubt.
"The orbiter for sure will happen. There's no issue there," Cook said. "The lander they're still talking about."
Mars Polar Lander could have touched down on the side of a vast canyon and toppled over. Or it could have exploded before entering the atmosphere. Its radio systems might have failed. Or it could have sunk in Martian dust.
So far, attempts to capture a picture of the lander's parachute from the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor have been unsuccessful. Engineers are attempting to spot the Mars Pathfinder parachute to determine if the lander's parachute can be seen by the orbiting camera.
It's possible the reason for the mission's failure may never be known, but investigators will make recommendations for future missions. A likely recommendation will be the addition of a radio that maintains contact with Earth during the difficult entry and landing phases -- something missing from last year's batch of spacecraft.
The review boards are expected to release their findings in mid-March.
"I know they have lots of theories and ideas, but I don't know that they're any closer to nailing things down," Cook said.
Mission controllers have attempted to contact the lander with each communications window since Dec. 3, and with each failure eliminated a possible failure scenario.
At first, the possible problems were simple. Perhaps the spacecraft's computers went into a safe mode or one of its two radios failed. After a week, controllers said it was very unlikely that they would ever hear from the spacecraft.
Since Jan. 6, controllers were working under the assumption that somehow the spacecraft's clock was scrambled, Cook said. Every two hours, the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor passed over the landing site and listened for a signal -- just in case.
Though untried possibilities remain, controllers decided to end the search.
"The way it works is that you can spend forever continuing to do things," said NASA's Cook. "It could be this thing went wrong plus thing went wrong and another thing went wrong. But the likelihood is extremely remote and so we sort of draw the line."]
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