The last credible chance to bear from Mars lander ends in silence

THE LAST realistic opportunity to contact the silent Mars Polar Lander ended Tuesday, Dec. 7, with no sign of life from the missing spacecraft, all but ending hope that the $165 million mission can be saved.

Nasa administrator Dan Goldin said that the investigation will examine the space agency's entire Mars program and could delay upcoming missions. Engineers have now eliminated all simple explanations for why they have not heard from the probe since its descent into the Martian atmosphere on Dec. 3. Two microprobes that were to have landed separately also were lost.

"After four increasingly difficult days, the Mars Polar Lander flight team played its last ace," a somber Richard Cook, the spacecraft's operations manager at National Aeronautics and Space Administration Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said of the last attempt at contact.

The Mars Polar Lander is the second spacecraft to be lost over the Red Planet in less than three months. Like with Mars Climate Orbiter, internal investigators and outside experts will look at every detail of the mission--from development to disappearance.

The investigation into the loss will also explore all aspects of the Mars program and could result in missing the scheduled 2001 launch of an orbiter and lander as well as delaying sample return missions that were to bring Red Planet rocks to Earth by 2008, Goldin said.