WASHINGTON (AP) -- NASA's best effort to find a missing Mars space probe failed Monday night, as scientists at the space agency began to lose hope for the 10-year-old planet-mapping workhorse.
After more than two weeks of silence from the Mars Global Surveyor, NASA will make other tries, but scientists began to sound resigned Tuesday.
"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 finished its work eight years ago, is the oldest of six different active space probes on or circling the red planet.
Among its accomplishments are its more than 240,000 pictures of the red planet, offering the best big-picture view of the red planet.
"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."
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/11/21/mars.surveyor.ap/index.htmlThis is in my view, one of the greatest things my country ever did, to extend human vision with its robotic spacecraft.
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