World News 07-12-1999 Last Chance For NASA`s $165 million Probe who: NASA what: Will have last chance to rescue $165 million Mars project where: Mars when: Today snippet: "NASA scientists were facing the bleak realisation yesterday that yet another Mars spacecraft has vanished, wiping out an entire phase of the programme to explore the Red Planet," reports The Times. Engineers have not given up hope of contacting the Mars Polar Lander, which disappeared from contact last Friday, but they admitted that today will their last chance to salvage the $165 million operation. It`s less than three months since the $125 Mars Climate Orbiter strayed off course and was lost due to NASA`s mix-up over metric and imperial calculations. In fact, about two out of every three missions to Mars so far have failed, reports The Times Science Editor Nigel Hawkes, "prompting the semi-serious opinion among space scientists that the planet is jinxed". The former Soviet Union spent billions of dollars trying to `conquer` Mars, with little effect. "Mars 96, the last hurrah of the Russian unmanned programme, failed even to reach Earth orbit, coming down in the Pacific or, some say, in a remote corner of the Andes." [... more]

What The Papers Say is delivered to thousands of readers every morning by web, WAP and email. Sign up today!