Posted on 11/21/2006 12:40:10 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - NASA's best effort to find a missing Mars space probe have failed, scientists said Tuesday as they began to lose hope for the 10-year-old planet-mapping workhorse.
After more than two weeks of silence from the Mars Global Surveyor, NASA will make other tries to locate it, but scientists were pessimistic.
"We may have lost a dear old friend and teacher," Michael Meyer, the lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program said in a news conference.
The $154 million surveyor, which was supposed to last only two years but continued sending data for almost a decade, is the oldest of six different active space probes on or circling the red planet.
Among its accomplishments are more than 240,000 pictures of Mars, offering the best big-picture view of the planet. Meyer credited the probe with proving that Mars once had water.
"Every good thing comes to an end at some point," said Arizona State University scientist Phil Christensen. "It certainly in my mind greatly exceeded our wildest expectations of what to hope for. It revolutionized what we were thinking about Mars."
On Monday night, NASA had hoped to catch a glimpse of the surveyor from the camera on the new Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. But the orbiter failed to spot it.
Now NASA will try an even less likely search effort. Engineers will send a signal to the silent spacecraft, asking it to turn on a beacon on one of the two Mars rovers below. If the rover beacon turns on, NASA could figure out where the lost Mars Surveyor is, said project manager Tom Thorpe.
"While we have not exhausted everything we can do ... we believe the prospect for recovery of MGS is not looking very good at all," said Fuk Li, Mars program manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which controls the probe. "We're still holding out some hope."
NASA will keep trying small-scale communications efforts. Experts believe the surveyor, which lost contact Nov. 2, probably developed a problem with a device that moves solar panels causing it to lose communication.
The entire Mars Global Surveyor program cost $247 million, including launch expenses and a decade of in-flight operations. NASA had just approved a two-year mission extension for $6 million a year.
Launched on Nov. 7, 1996, the probe gave scientists the best topographic map of any planet in the solar system, said Cornell University astronomer Steve Squyres, who didn't have an instrument on board the probe but was part of NASA's scientific review team.
The probe gave Earth its first detailed views of massive dust storms and gullies. It also revealed a new mystery about Mars: It once had a magnetic field.
The low-cost probe rose "from the ashes" of a dramatic Mars failure, Squyres said. In 1993, the $813 million Mars Observer disappeared just before getting to the planet. Most of that probe's instruments were built again and included on the Mars Global Surveyor.
Christensen called the global surveyor "a workhorse" because of its numerous and diverse scientific instruments.
"It really has opened up new vistas of Mars that we hadn't the foggiest notion of," said Arizona State University geologist Ron Greeley.
A computer design downloaded from the internet of the Mars Global Surveyor, is shown in this Jan. 29, 1999 file photo. NASA's best effort to find the missing probe failed Monday night, as scientists at the space agency began to lose hope for the 10-year-old planet-mapping workhorse, which has been silent for more than two weeks. The spacecraft was designed to return detailed photographs of features on Mars: it has beamed back more than 240,000 over t he last decade. (AP Photo/JPL NASA)
On the Net:
Mars Global Surveyor home page: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/
This image released by NASA shows gullies eroded into the wall of a meteor impact crater in Noachis Terra from the Mars Global Surveyor, MGS, Mars Orbiter Camera, MOC, September 28, 1999. After more than two weeks of silence from the 10-year-old Mars Global Surveyor, scientists began to sound resigned Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2006. NASA's best effort to find a missing Mars space probe failed Monday night, and though scientists at the space agency began to lose hope, they said they will try again. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems)
An area on Mars discovered by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor shows what is believed to be the inverted floor of a former meandering stream, in an undated image. NASA is running out of options for fixing the Glolbal Surveyor, officials said on Monday. (NASA/Handout/Reuters)
I'd say the taxpayers got their money's worth...
1976 Viking photo of the Face on Mars and 2001 Global Surveyor photo of the same Face.
NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems
Two annular (i.e., somewhat circular) clouds are seen in the upper left corner of this mosaic of MOC wide angle camera daily global mapping images. To the right of the picture's center is the martian north polar cap. The image has a scale of about 7.5 kilometers (4.7 miles) per pixel. Annular clouds are common in mid-northern summer in the north polar region, and may result from eddy currents in the lower atmosphere. The appearance of such clouds happens every year; this year they came like clockwork within a two-week forecasted period, based on the previous 4 martian years of experience gained from MGS MOC daily global imaging.
Let me be the first to say it: Did they look in Uranus?
Sad news but it looks like they got their money's worth!
This is what my hard-earned tax dollars are being wasted on? I want it to go to build a 700-mile useless fence next to Mexico.
No, Congresswoman Jackson-Lee, it is NOT next to the flagpole!
$175 million? That's about $0.63 per person in America back in 1999. I got MY money's worth (I think).
500% beyond it's design life is pretty damn good performance in my book.
Money better spent than on the STS that cost us the SCSC.
IIRC Spirit and Opportunity had 90 day expected lifetimes. Now at three years?
Either we are equal or we are not. Good people should be armed where they will, with wits and guns. NRA KMA
Something almost nobody wants to hear, "We lost the probe."
It is the hi-res images of Mars from the new orbiter. They will be flooding us with hi-res.
New Mars images beginning to flood over the Internet
Details visible in the HiRISE image of Opportunity's landing site show the parachute lying on the Martian surface, Opportunity's heat shield at a different location, and the lander itself on the floor of the small impact crater where the airbag came to a stop.
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