Douglas Isbell

Headquarters, Washington, DC

(Phone: 202/358-1547)

Elvia Thompson

Headquarters, Washington, DC

(Phone: 202/358-1696)

RELEASE: 00-6

MARS PROGRAM INDEPENDENT ASSESSMENT TEAM BEGINS WORK

Sixteen experienced engineers, scientists and executives have
been named by NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin to form the Mars
Program Independent Assessment Team. The team is holding its
initial organizational meeting today at NASA Headquarters.

Chaired by Thomas Young, retired executive vice president of
Lockheed Martin Corp., this team has been chartered to review the
agency’s approach to robotic exploration of Mars in the wake of
the recent loss of the Mars Polar Lander mission.

The team’s participants are:

  • James Arnold, Deputy Director, Aerospace Directorate, NASA Ames
    Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
  • Thomas Brackey, Executive Director for Technical Operations,
    Hughes Space and Communications Co., Los Angeles, CA
  • Michael Carr, planetary geologist, U.S. Geological Survey,
    Menlo Park, CA
  • Douglas Dwoyer, Associate Director for Research and Technology
    Competencies, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA
  • Gen. Ronald Fogelman, U.S. Air Force (retired)
  • Maj. Gen. Ralph Jacobsen, U.S. Air Force (retired) and
    president emeritus of the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory
  • Herb Kottler, Associate Director, Massachusetts Institute of
    Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA
  • Peter Lyman, consultant, Pasadena, CA
  • Joanne Maguire, Vice President for Group Development, TRW Space
    & Technology Group, Redondo Beach, CA
  • Robert Pattishall, Director of Advanced Systems and Technology,
    National Reconnaissance Office, Chantilly, VA
  • Larry Soderblom, planetary scientist, U.S. Geological Survey,
    Flagstaff, AZ
  • Peter Staudhammer, Vice President for Science and Technology,
    TRW Inc., Cleveland, OH
  • Kathy Thornton, Assistant Dean for Graduate Programs,
    University of Virginia, Charlottesville, and retired NASA
    astronaut
  • Peter Wilhelm, Director of the Naval Center for Space
    Technology, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC
  • Brian Williams, Assistant Professor, MIT Space Systems
    Laboratory, Cambridge, MA
  • Maria Zuber, Professor of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences,
    MIT

The team will evaluate several recent successful and
unsuccessful NASA missions to deep space, including Mars
Pathfinder, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Climate Orbiter, Mars Polar
Lander, Deep Space 1 and Deep Space 2. It will analyze the
budgets, content, schedule, management structure and scientific
organization of these missions. It will then assess how these
roles and responsibilities are related to mission safety,
reliability and success.

It will also review proposed revisions to NASA’s existing
Mars exploration program architecture as options are developed by
a group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.

The team will brief the NASA administrator on their findings
by mid-March 2000.

– end-