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Mars Climate Orbiter presumed lost

Associated Press Arizona Daily Wildcat Richard Cook, center, and John B. McNamee, right, both project managers for the Mars Climate Orbiter at NASA, along with Carl Pilcher of NASA's Office of Space Science try to explain yesterday during a news conference in Pasadena, Calif. the whereabouts of the satellite that was presumed destroyed. A preliminary analysis shows the Mars Climate Orbiter approached Mars too closely and likely broke into pieces or burned up in the atmosphere.

NASA's worst fears became reality yesterday when the Mars Climate Orbiter was reported lost soon after reaching the Red Planet.

Despite this setback, the UA-assisted Mars Polar Lander mission is still scheduled to hit Martian soil on Dec. 3.

Hoping to celebrate the arrival of the first interplanetary weather satellite, project scientists quickly grew concerned when the Climate Orbiter failed to re-establish communications after a scheduled 20-minute delay.

A navigation error is suspected to have put the $125 million spacecraft into orbit at a perilously low altitude where it likely burned up in Mars' atmosphere.

"We had planned to approach the planet at an altitude of about 150 kilometers (93 miles). It appears the actual altitude was about 60 kilometers (37 miles)," stated Richard Cook, project manager for the Mars Surveyor Operations Project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a statement yesterday.

"We believe that the minimum survivable altitude for the spacecraft would have been 85 kilometers," he stated.

Cook stated mission scientists are still trying to determine what caused the error.

The Climate Orbiter was launched in December 1998. In addition to its scientific mission, the orbiter was going to be the communications relay for the upcoming lander mission.

Peter Smith, an assistant research scientist at UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, said the incident will cause some changes in the lander's schedule.

"It's definitely a tragedy, there's no question about that," he said. "It just causes us to restructure the way we do things."

Smith and colleagues at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy designed the stereoscopic imager and robotic arm camera for the Mars Polar Lander. The lander mission also includes a set of UA-designed laser ovens for analyzing the Martian soil.

Previously, Smith led the team that developed the imager for NASA's 1997 Mars Pathfinder mission.

"What we really lost is the science support we had hoped to get from the orbiter," Smith said.

In addition to serving as the Polar Lander's data relay, the Climate Orbiter was scheduled for a one-year science mission that would have provided valuable information on the Martian atmosphere.

Smith said that although the loss of the orbiter is a considerable setback for the upcoming lander mission, scientists still have other options available to accomplish their goals.

He said scientists will still be able to send and receive data directly from Earth to the Polar Lander using the "Pathfinder mode."

"We had a low-power antenna (on the lost orbiter)," Smith said. "Now we have to use a high-gain antenna and go straight to Earth. When we do that, it takes a lot more power from the spacecraft."

Smith said since this mode of communication worked well with the Pathfinder mission, it should work fine with the Polar Lander.

Mission scientists must now begin the laborious task of changing all their well made plans to accommodate the new situation.

Smith said the command codes for the orbiter now have to be scrapped.

"We have to throw them in the garbage and start all over again," Smith said. "It's going to be a lot of long hours at the Lunar and Planetary Lab."

Although the loss of the orbiter has cast a chill over the mission, Smith remains optimistic that scientists will identify what went wrong.

"It's much scarier now - we have faith that they'll find the problems and correct them, but until we see pictures coming back (from the lander) we're going to be very nervous," he said.