Missing Mars craft appears to be a lost cause
After two weeks of futilely searching for the Mars Global Surveyor, NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory officials said Tuesday that the missing spacecraft was probably lost forever.
In its 10-year career, the probe has sent back more than 240,000 images of the red planet, providing the first strong evidence that water flowed there as recently as 100,000 years ago.
It also charted weather cycles and mapped landing sites for the two rovers now operating on the Martian surface.
“We may have lost a dear old friend and teacher,” said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program.
A radio communication from the craft two weeks ago indicated it was having trouble maneuvering one of its two solar panels.
If the panel cannot be positioned correctly, the craft’s batteries will be drained, and it will no longer be able to communicate with JPL controllers in La Canada Flintridge.
On Monday, the team used cameras on the new Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to look for the missing craft but found no trace of it.
Then, late Tuesday, the team instructed the surveyor to signal the rover Opportunity as the craft passed over the rover’s landing site. If Opportunity received a signal, it would relay it to Earth via the Mars Odyssey orbiter.
The problematic solar panel is thought to have cracked shortly after launch, possibly when it deployed too hard and broke a damper arm.
That damage “may be totally unrelated to this event,” said Tom Thorpe, Mars Global Surveyor project manager at JPL. “But this panel seems to be the one that caused the problem.”
Despite the initial damage, as well as a failed gyroscope and a worn-out reaction wheel used for orienting the cameras, the craft has performed flawlessly until now.
The craft had “an illustrious career,” said Fuk Li, JPL’s Mars program manager. “We are still holding out hope, but we are fully prepared in our heart that we may never talk to it again.”
Launched Nov. 7, 1996, the Mars Global Surveyor has exceeded its intended lifetime fivefold and produced a string of discoveries. Among them:
* The craft found gullies cut into slopes that had few impact craters, indicating the action of liquid water in modern times.
* Its infrared camera found concentrations of hematite, a mineral that generally forms under wet conditions.
* Using its laser altimeter, the probe produced a detailed topographic map of Mars that revealed highly eroded or buried craters too subtle for previous observation.
* Its magnetometer found traces of a global magnetic field, like Earth’s, that once shielded the planet from damaging cosmic rays.
* It tracked changes in weather for four complete Mars years, the equivalent of eight Earth years. For three consecutive Martian summers, it showed that the polar ice caps were shrinking, suggesting a climate change in progress.
The craft “has surpassed all expectations,” Meyer said. “It has already been the most productive science mission to Mars, and it will yield more discoveries” as the images it sent back are fully analyzed.
Mars Global Surveyor incorporated many scientific instruments originally designed for the $813-million Mars Observer, which lost contact with JPL in 1993 just before getting to the planet. The loss was later blamed on a fuel leak and poor planning and management.
Many of the instruments designed for the lost craft were rebuilt for the global surveyor, allowing it to be launched for a modest $150 million.
The total cost of the 10-year mission to date is about $247 million, and NASA had just approved a two-year extension of the mission for about $6 million a year.
thomas.maugh@latimes.com
