Word: landers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...modern government administrator. Facing criticism that the space agency was wasting money, Goldin declared at the start of his tenure that he would turn the problem into an opportunity, finding ways to do more with less--and to all appearances, the strategy was working. The Mars Pathfinder Lander, built for a tenth the cost of its predecessors, riveted the nation's attention in 1997 with its live feed from the Red Planet's surface. And three years after its arrival Mars Global Surveyor is still sending back detailed photos and important data about the water-sculpted Martian landscape, including powerful...
...maybe not. With the Mars Polar Lander all but written off as a total loss, and the catastrophic failure of the Mars Climate Orbiter three months earlier, NASA is fast becoming the Dan Quayle of government agencies. Late-night comics have been roasting it mercilessly, while the Washington Post offered a Top 10 list of NASA excuses for the latest fiasco. (No. 10: Be patient. Mars Lander is trying to dial in on an AOL account.) Some cyberpranksters offered the Polar Lander for sale on eBay and got 16 bids...
NASA'S MARS LANDER Phone home! Second probe in less than three months goes AWOL. Will funding vanish...
...faster, better, cheaper" strategy is complete, and all we have to show for our $300 million-plus are a few conspiracy theories, a lot of disappointed people and some heavily trafficked web sites. NASA has all but given the last rites to its latest probe now that Mars Polar Lander has for the fourth straight day obstinately refused to phone home. Couple that with the failure three months ago of its sister ship, the Mars Climate Orbiter, and you could forgive space agency officials for feeling more than a little grumpy today...
...presumably doing its observing outside the Oort cloud), NASA officials have to be concerned by the timing of these high-profile failures. Tuesday, the agency announced it would reevaluate the Mars program, a move that could delay or even abort NASA's ambitious plans to send a lander and an orbiter to Mars every 26 months for the next decade. The loss of two straight probes prompts questions about whether the agency isn't cutting too many corners, sending out untested spacecraft without enough built-in redundancies, and it's hoped that an investigation into the apparent failure...