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NASA officially gives up hope on Polar Lander


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Arizona Daily Wildcat


From Staff Reports
Arizona Daily Wildcat,
January 18, 1999
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PASADENA, Calif.-Yesterday, NASA gave up trying to contact the missing Mars Polar Lander, confirming what had been suspected for more than a month: The $165 million spacecraft was dead on arrival.

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory listened for the spacecraft one last time and heard only silence.

"It is closure in the sense that I think we did everything we could to re-establish contact, and, yes, it's time to get on to other things," said project scientist Richard Zurek.

The spacecraft vanished Dec. 3 while trying to land on Mars. It was to have studied the atmosphere and dug for ice during a 90-day mission.

Among the possible explanations for its failure to call home: The three-legged lander burned up in the atmosphere, crashed on Mars or tipped over on the rugged surface and damaged itself.

An internal JPL board and a team of independent investigators are looking into the failure as well as the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter, which apparently burned up in the atmosphere last September because of a mix-up between English and metric units.

The investigators will also take a hard look at NASA's entire Mars program.

At least some answers are expected by mid-March, about a year before the next Mars orbiter and lander are set to launch.

Each failed contact attempt eliminated a possible explanation for the silence. The final effort assumed the spacecraft's clock was scrambled, and it didn't know when it was supposed to listen for a signal from Earth.

Efforts are under way to try to snap a picture of the lander's parachute from the Global Surveyor, a spacecraft in orbit around Mars. But its camera may not be sharp enough to pick up the parachute.

Peter Smith, University of Arizona senior research scientist, said he and other UA scientists have been dealing with the loss since Dec. 3.

"We want to continue working with NASA on Mars missions," Smith said. "Because of the loss of the two spacecraft, we're not sure what the future missions are anymore."

Smith said a scheduled NASA lander mission for 2001 - for which UA scientists built cameras - might not be carried out because of the failed missions.

"We don't know what NASA might plan for those instruments," he said.


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