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.
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. [AP]
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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."
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