In a case of art imitating life, miniature versions of NASA’s three most recent Mars spacecraft are missing — from the toy shelves. Surrounded by rumors, the “Hot Wheels ‘JPL Returns to Mars!’ Action Pack” may emerge as one of the most difficult to find products this holiday season.
December 14th, 1999
Nasa to scan Mars for lost probe
Nasa scientists will continue the hunt for their missing spacecraft, Mars Polar Lander (MPL). They will use a powerful camera on board another Mars probe, which is orbiting the Red Planet, to try to locate the lost lander.
December 13th, 1999
Hunt for Mars Polar Lander to Begin This Week
NASA plans within days to begin using the Mars Global Surveyor to make a concerted effort to locate the Polar Lander, just two weeks after the $165-million martian spacecraft vanished.
December 10th, 1999
Silence from missing Mars emissaries will echo for years Space Today
Today was supposed to be “Sol 7,” another full Martian day of work for the visitor from Earth – its robot arm digging, its eyes scanning the horizon, its microphone ear listening for the whisper of frigid wind. Instead, Mars Polar Lander is lost along with a companion satellite that was supposed to have parked itself in Martian orbit 10 weeks ago, taken pictures of the landscape and relayed the data back home.
December 9th, 1999
Reminder from Mars: This is rocket science Christian Science Monitor
Failure shows how hard it is to explore space. Night after sleep-deprived night, NASA scientists crowded into tiny Room 225, the Mars Operation Center at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and scanned the skies for overdue signals from the wayward Mars Polar Lander.
December 9th, 1999
Editorial: No time to stop venturing out into the universe
SOMEWHERE in the cold desolation near the south pole of Mars, apparently oblivious to the frantic efforts of earthlings to contact it, there is a lost spacecraft. Barring some stroke of remarkable luck in establishing contact, we may never know what went wrong on the Mars Polar Lander.
December 9th, 1999
Mars Exploration: Where To Now
The Mars Polar Lander (and its two small piggyback Deep Space-2 probes) have all failed, and without sending any telemetry back which could identify the cause of the failure.
December 8th, 1999
Clinton Defends NASA After Mars Lander Loss
President Clinton defended the U.S. space program on Wednesday, one day after NASA scientists confirmed the loss of the $165 million Mars Polar Lander. “I think it’s important not only for the American tradition of exploration. … We have to keep doing this if we ever hope to know what’s beyond our galaxy,” Clinton said at what was billed as his final news conference of the year.
December 8th, 1999
Mars ‘wake up call’ for Nasa
The suspected loss of the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft could result in the postponement or cancellation of the next trip to the Red Planet. The deputy director of Nasa’s Office of Space Sciences, Ed Weiler, described the failure of the $165m spacecraft as “a crushing blow for the Mars programme,” that could cause a 2001 Mars launch to be scrapped.