Fergie's Tech Blog

NASA's Mars Global Surveyor Believed Lost in Space

Gina Keating writes for Reuters:

NASA scientists conceded on Tuesday that the 10-year-old Mars Global Surveyor is probably lost in space after the U.S. agency tried unsuccessfully for two weeks to contact the probe.

The spacecraft, the oldest of five NASA robotic explorers studying Mars, was circling the planet snapping high-resolution images and studying the climate in a mission that led to the first evidence that water once flowed on the planet's surface.

The Global Surveyor went silent after reporting problems with a sticky solar panel, and scans of the skies have produced no sign of it.

posted by Fergie @ 11/21/2006 03:05:00 PM