The Little Spaceship That Could May End A Heroic Career

NASA headquarters in Washington and the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California communicated to this Blogcritics author today, 21 November, that the Mars Global Surveyor - that "little spaceship that could" - may be ending its heroic career. Surveyor lasted the longest and sent back the most information of any craft sent to Mars.

If it cannot be found and contacted with commands that would, perhaps, make it functional again; it will still have made a grand contribution to our knowledge of the red planet and it will still have given us all a model of perseverance and valor in the service of man's knowledge.

"Mars Global Surveyor has surpassed all expectations," said Michael
Meyer, NASA's lead scientist for Mars exploration at NASA
Headquarters, Washington. "It has already been the most productive
science mission to Mars, and it will yield more discoveries as the
treasury of observations it has made continues to be analyzed for
years to come." Its camera has returned more than 240,000 images to
Earth.

Fuk Li, the Mars Exploration Manager at JPL, said today that efforts have been, and will continue to be, made to contact Surveyor but that "Realistically, we have run through the most likely possibilities for re-establishing communication, and we are facing the likelihood that the amazing flow of scientific observations from Mars Global Surveyor
is over."

However, he went on to promise "... We are not giving up hope."

Even if Surveyor remains silent in the cold of space, lit by the pale, red light of its new home, Tom Thorpe, the Project Manager for the Mars Global Surveyor, listed the immense effort the little spaceship made during its 10 year sojourn alone in space. He eulogized the craft with this description: "It is an extraordinary machine that has done things the designers never envisioned despite a broken wing, a failed gyro and a worn-out reaction wheel. The builders and operating staff can be proud of their legacy of scientific discoveries and key support for subsequent missions."

Surveyor helped pick out landing places for both NASA rovers that landed in 2004 and helped to choose places for Phoenix and Mars Science Lab missions in the future. It was used as a relay for the rovers and helped by mapping the areas around them and watched atmospheric conditions as the newer orbiter spacecraft slowed to their orbital speeds around the planet.

Article Author: Howard Dratch

Howard writes on science, books, movies and news for Blogcritics and on his own blogs from the border of North and Central America.

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