Space scientists now hold out little hope of contacting the Mars Polar Lander satellite, silent since its presumed landing near the planet's south pole last Friday. Nor are they likely to be able to explain what happened to the missing space probe and why all attempts to establish a radio link failed.
Early yesterday NASA flight controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, made their seventh unsuccessful attempt to raise the $165 million lander. "We are at the point where we can safely say that our expectations for the success of the mission are remote," the project manager, Mr Richard Cook, said.
The most recent attempt used the Mars Global Surveyor Satellite, which is currently orbiting Mars, but the lander failed to respond to its radio signal.
The team will keep trying to reach the lander for another two weeks, Mr Cook said, but efforts were "unlikely to result in a successful communication" at this stage.
The Mars Polar Lander was launched last January 3rd on an ambitious mission to search for hidden water on Mars. The lander was equipped with a scoop and a small oven that was to have heated up soil samples to test for water vapour.
The satellite also carried two "mini probes" which were to have split off from the lander and hit the surface at 400 m.p.h.
These would have been driven about a metre deep into the Martian soil to measure for underground water, radioing back their findings to the lander. All systems were working normally as the space craft began its final approach for a landing at 8.15 p.m. last Friday, but no radio message has since been received.
"It may be that everything went right and it simply landed in a terrible spot," said Prof Robert Park, a University of Maryland expert on the space programme.
"Who knows if it landed on a big boulder and fell over. We just don't know, and we never will, is my guess."
Additional reporting: Reuters, AFP
