Aug 24 1993
From The Space Library
NASA officials said that the Mars Observer mission could be a total loss if ground controllers failed to reestablish contact with the probe in time for the scheduled start of the orbit on August 24. Engineers suspected that a faulty flight clock aboard the craft might have caused communications to cease. New computer commands were sent telling Mars Observer to switch to a backup clock. However, the commands failed to restore contact with the spacecraft, suggesting that the clock theory was wrong. If contact could not be restarted, controllers would have no way of receiving scientific data or even confirming if the Mars Observer probe had made it into orbit. The Mars Observer project was the first U.S. mission to Mars in 17 years; it was designed to pave the way for a new generation of international planetary exploration centered on Mars.
The prognosis was even worse for a $67 million weather satellite launched for NASA by the Air Force from California on August 9. Officials said today that they were 90 percent certain that an electrical malfunction had killed the satellite, called NOAA-13. (AP, Aug 24/93: RT, Aug 24/93; USA Today, Aug 24/93, Aug 25/93; NY Times, Aug 24/93, Aug 25/93; P Inq, Aug 24/93, Aug 26/93; LA Times, Aug 24/93, Aug 25/93; W Times, Aug 25/93; WSJ, Aug 25/93; W Post, Aug 25/93; B Sun, Aug 25/93; RTW, Aug 25/93; UPn, Aug 24/93; C Trib, Aug 24/93)
Some scientists, led by former CBS News science adviser Richard C. Hoagland, accused NASA of not doing enough to investigate surface features that may be signs of intelligent life. The critics say that computer-enhanced photographs taken by the 1976 Viking Mars mission show objects on the Cydonia Plain that they believe were left by an extraterrestrial civilization. Mr. Hoagland said a "rogue group in NASA" might have sabotaged the Mars Observer mission to suppress information about the Cydonia Plain structures. NASA officials denied the charge. (APn, Aug 24/93; LA Times, August 25/93; Weekly World, Sept 14/93)
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