MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Mars Polar Lander Mission Status
December 22, 1999
Flight controllers for Mars Polar Lander are continuing to
work through their fault-tree scenarios in their ongoing attempts
to communicate with the spacecraft. Chances of recovering the
lander remain remote.
Team members plan to continue looking for a signal from the
lander through mid-January, and at that point they will be in a
position of having exhausted all possible recovery modes.
Late last week, NASA’s orbiting Mars Global Surveyor
spacecraft began an imaging campaign to look for evidence of the
lander, parachute or aeroshell. So far, nothing has been
detected.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has appointed a special review
board to evaluate the apparent loss of Mars Polar Lander and the
Deep Space 2 microprobes. The board will attempt to determine
the possible root causes for these losses and identify actions
needed to assure success in future Mars landings.
The 12-member JPL board will be chaired by John Casani and
is made up of members from JPL, Caltech, other NASA centers and
industry. The findings of the board will be presented in a
written report due by March 3, 2000. The board will offer its
cooperation and assistance to related NASA efforts including the
agency’s Mars Program Independent Assessment Team.
Mars Polar Lander is part of a series of missions in a long-
term program of Mars exploration managed by JPL for NASA’s Office
of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL’s industrial partner is
Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver. JPL is a division of the
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.
