Date Posted:21:32:44 12/06/99 Mon Author: Scullystar Subject: I just read this article about it... In reply to:
Marek
's message, "Mars Polar Lander where are you ?" on 21:52:05 12/05/99 Sun
PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) - U.S. space scientists,stymied in increasingly desperate efforts to contact the Mars Polar Lander, faced a make-or-break day on Monday amid fears NASA would be forced to write off its second Mars mission in three months.Flight controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said two more attempts to raise the $165 million lander Sunday had failed, leaving just one last
likely communications window shortly after midnightPacific time Tuesday.If that proves fruitless, they conceded it was possible the three-legged craft could be lost for good a serious blow to NASA's Mars program, which in September saw the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter stray off course and
disappear due to a human calculation error.
``We're pretty much reaching the point where we've used up our final silver bullets,'' project manager Richard Cook said, adding that after the Tuesday attempt the team
would be at ``the point of diminishing returns'' in trying to contact the missing craft.
Sunday's communications failures capped a dismal weekend for the scientists behind the polar lander, which appeared to be on course for a successful landing about 500 miles from the Martian south pole at midday Friday. Since then, however, JPL has received no signals to confirm that either the lander or the two probes it separately sent shooting to the Martian surface arrived safely, forcing mission controllers through an increasingly elaborate series of contingency tests designed to find out if any of the three spacecraft made it to the ground in one functioning piece.
