Mars Failure 'A Crushing Blow' - NASA Chief

Updated 5:06 PM ET December 7, 1999

By Michael Miller

PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) - The loss of the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft has dealt a crushing blow to NASA's Mars exploration program and could result in the postponement or cancellation of the next planned trip to the red planet, a top space agency official said Tuesday.

"This has been a wake up call and we are going to respond to it. We are not going to sit back and blandly go forward," Ed Weiler, deputy director of NASA's Office of Space Sciences, told reporters from the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

The lander mission's fate was sealed at 12:30 a.m. PST (3:30 a.m. EST) on Tuesday when the craft failed to get in touch with the Mars Global Surveyor satellite circling the planet. It was the seventh attempt to get the spindly, three-legged craft to call home following its arrival on Mars on Friday.

Two microprobes sent to the surface by the lander also failed to communicate with Earth.

Weiler described the loss of the $165 million spacecraft and its two microprobes, which cost $29 million, as "a crushing blow for the Mars program," that could cause the next Mars launch, scheduled for 2001, to be postponed or canceled.

"I am not convinced that we will go forward with 2001. Right now, I have no confidence that it will be a successful mission," he said.

The lander and orbiter for the 2001 mission are almost completely built and Weiler said he would not scrap them. "Let's look at the hardware we built and let's see what we can do to it for 2003. I want to take off the shackles of launch dates. If we are not happy with 2001 we shouldn't launch," he added.

Weiler said NASA would make a decision on the 2001 mission "literally within weeks. I would not like to miss an opportunity (to launch in 2001), but I am not going to launch for the sake of launching."

The failed mission could also impact a future mission, set for 2008, to return samples from Mars to Earth in the most ambitious unmanned flight yet.

Weiler said he did not want 2008 to be the driving force of the Mars program, "if it doesn't make sense," and suggested it might be put back to 2010.

But he stressed that the exploration of Mars would continue. "You can whine about it (the mission failure) and sit on your hands and cry or immediately figure out what you did wrong...and how you can make it right. We're exploring and we've got to continue.

There would, however, be a "major rethinking" of the Mars program. A better communications system was necessary before NASA launches its next Mars probe, as well as better navigation and better reconnoitering by satellite to choose a safe landing sight and better use of new technology.

"The bottom line is that we've got to look at the whole program. Perhaps we'll do a mission to Mars that will be purely technology, to test new technology. I know that flying to Mars and not doing science is anathema to scientists. But if you lose craft the answer is still zero," Weiler said.

But, he added, even with all the improvements and changes that he would like to see, "These are very, very difficult missions and sometimes things aren't going to go right. We are never going to be in a position to guarantee 100 percent that nothing will go wrong. We are taking a risk."

Weiler said one or more review boards would be set up in the next few weeks to look into the failure of the mission. While the fate of the lander may never be known, the inquest will focus largely not on what went wrong in space, but what mistakes might have been made on Earth in preparing for the flight, he said.

"There will be nothing off the table for investigation," Weiler added.

Asked how he thought Congress -- which has tried to whittle away at NASA's budget for years -- would react to the failure, Weiler referred to the result of two opinion polls published on Tuesday.

He said a poll in USA Today showed that 73 percent of the population said America should continue going to Mars, while an MSNBC poll showed the 53 percent said NASA should be spending more money on exploring the red planet while only 15 percent said it should be spending less.

"I consider this a vote of confidence by the American people ... I urge Congress to read these two national polls," Weiler said.