NASA scientists now assume the Mars Orbiter burned and crashed on the Martian surface

September 24, 1999
Web posted at: 10:39 p.m. EDT (0239 GMT)

In this story: Orbiter plunged lower than lowest survivable orbit Polar Lander mission must be redesigned RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

PASADENA, California (CNN) -- NASA scientists have given up their search for the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter, which was lost after a navigation error pushed it fatally close to the planet on Thursday.

"The spacecraft has been declared lost," said Mary Beth Murrill, a spokeswoman for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

However, NASA officials insist the loss will not affect the mission of the orbiter's sister probe, the Mars Polar Lander, which is winging its way through space and is due to arrive in early December.

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"The loss of any of those missions is very serious, but it's not devastating to the program as a whole," said Carl Pilcher of NASA's Office of Space Exploration. "The missions are designed to be complementary and independent."

Since scientists lost contact with the orbiter early Thursday morning. They had been using NASA's Deep Space Network of radio antennas to search for signals from the spacecraft. That search was abandoned Friday evening as chances of re-establishing contact faded.

"Pretty much we know there is no hope of finding anything," said Mary Hardin, another spokeswoman for JPL.

Orbiter plunged lower than lowest survivable orbit

Ground controllers have determined that the orbiter, which was designed to circle the planet but not land on it, came within 36 miles (60 kilometers) of the Martian surface. That's about 15 miles (25 kilometers) lower than the lowest orbit the craft was designed to survive.

NASA officials have launched an investigation into what caused the navigation error.

"It is very much premature to say it is any particular cause," said operations manager Richard Cook.

"We're eager to understand this and get it behind us," Murrill said. "Nobody here takes failure lightly, and it's not something we're used to."

The spacecraft may have crashed into the planet, but with the search abandoned, there is no way to answer that question quickly.

"We don't know what the nature of the problem is," Hardin said.

The orbiter carried instruments designed to study Mars' atmosphere and the fate of water that is believed to have once pooled there in huge oceans. The information is key to understanding whether life ever existed on Mars.

The Mars Polar Lander, the sister probe of the Orbiter, will undergo alterations to its own mission as a result of the Orbiter's loss

Polar Lander mission must be redesigned

The spacecraft was also supposed to serve as a communications relay between Earth and the Mars Polar Lander, which is designed to land on Mars to study the soil and look for ice beneath its surface.

Between now and the lander's touchdown on December 3, scientists will make alterations in the mission to compensate for the loss of the orbiter, said David Paige, a UCLA planetary science professor and the lander's science investigator.

"This is a very substantial change to our plans," he said. "The orbiter was going to be our primary link to the lander, and the way these missions work is that there's an incredible amount of advance planning."

"Our goal is to redesign so that we do everything that we were planning to do for the original mission," Paige said.

CNN Interactive Writer Robin Lloyd and The Associated Press contributed to this report.