Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 26, 1993 TAG: 9308260124
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PASADENA, CALIF. LENGTH: Medium
Some analysts said they believed Mars Observer exploded into "little bitty pieces" Saturday when radio contact was lost as the spacecraft was supposed to be pressurizing its fuel tanks.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory insisted the spacecraft most likely started orbiting Mars on schedule Tuesday, even though engineers didn't hear from it.
Space agency engineers hoped an automatic computer program, designed to restore communications after a prolonged loss of contact, eventually would make Mars Observer send a signal to them, possibly as early as Wednesday evening.
But only silence came from space.
With no word from the spacecraft, engineers couldn't rule out the possibility that it soared past Mars or was destroyed or damaged, ending the $980 million mission.
"Unfortunately, we still have no two-way communication or one-way communication or data of any kind from the spacecraft," project manager Glenn Cunningham said during a news conference.
He said NASA wouldn't give up trying to reach Mars Observer, but "every day without communications clearly lessens any probability of success."
"I'm betting it blew up on Saturday," said John Pike, a space policy analyst for the Federation of American Scientists in Washington.
"If it went off the air when you're pressurizing the fuel tanks, you'd expect a problem with the pressurization system, and that usually consists of something between a small leak and a big explosion," Pike said.
NASA engineers have said they doubted Mars Observer exploded because the tanks had backup pressure regulators and the pressure shouldn't have been strong enough to rupture the tanks.
Mars Observer was launched from Florida Sept. 25 on a 450-million-mile journey to Mars. It was supposed to go into a long, elliptical orbit, then take three months maneuvering into a 234-mile-high circular orbit, where it was to spend at least 687 Earth days - one Martian year - studying the geology, weather and seasonal climate change on Mars.
NASA's Deep Space Network tracking stations in California, Australia and Spain have been using their big dish-shaped antennas to listen for a signal from Mars Observer. The crisis meant less time was spent tracking NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which is scheduled to explore asteroid Ida on Saturday and study Jupiter during 1995-97.
by CNB