While most Pomona students slogged through their daily activities on Friday, December 3, some out-of-this-world events were taking place just 40 minutes from campus. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) located in Pasadena, was charged with landing and receiving communications from three devices which touched down on Mars this past Friday.

Although the Mars Polar Lander and two smaller Deep Space 2 probes seem to have landed at their proper destinations, scientists at JPL received no communications at 12:39 pm PST, as expected. Frustrations mounted as subsequent windows of transmission slipped away in similar silence.

File photo

The atmosphere at JPL grew increasingly tense as the first transmission window waned. Smiles were harder to come by. Monitors showing the control room displayed technicians no longer hustling around, but hanging their heads in their hands. However, when asked during the press conference whether the delays indicated the $165 million mission’s failure, Richard Cook, the Mars Polar Lander Project Manager, confidently informed media sources that "there are four or five days in which to try other options. We’re not even thinking that far ahead yet."

The Mars Polar Lander was launched in January of this year with a number of objectives. Ideally, the lander, after setting down on the southern ice cap of Mars, would collect Martian rock samples using a six-foot robotic arm. It would then use lasers to analyze the rock and core samples for water ice, and would employ special three-dimensional cameras to study topography, atmospheric weather, seasonal changes, and the layered terrain on the surface of Mars. Scientists hoped to find out what happened to the oceans of water that once flowed on the planet. The Polar Lander was also equipped with a microphone in order to capture for the first time the sounds of another world.

The two smaller Deep Space 2 probes, released during the lander’s entry, were to be the first surface penetrating probes ever sent by NASA to another planet. After slamming into Mars at over 400 mph and punching one meter down into the soil, they were to heat a core sample and determine soil characteristics, especially whether ice is present below the surface. Scientists now believe the probes may have landed at an angle against a crater wall, which would have shattered the probes and bounced them uselessly onto the Martian surface.

Those interested in the possibility of life on other planets will be especially disappointed. According to JPL literature, with this project "NASA scientists also began to rethink how to look for signs of past or current life on Mars…Evidence of the early climate of Mars and of ancient life, if any, may be preserved in sedimentary rocks in these environments." Although no biological testing was to be carried out by the Polar Lander, evidence of ancient surface water could have provided relevant information about the presence of life on our neighboring planet.

As of last Sunday, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were hesitant to draw conclusions about the future state of the mission. "Clearly the team is getting more frustrated, certainly, and more tense about all of this. Our confidence is less and less that we landed successfully," said Cook. The failure to establish communications with the lander and probes will preclude any data collection for the time being. More important, however, will be the long-term effects on NASA’s budget and the public perspective of the space program.

A few Pomona students, this reporter among them, were able to attend the events last Friday, putting us on the spot for what might turn out to be a crucial turning point in the future of NASA. Following the recent loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter (due to errors in English-to-metric conversion), this new setback may mean severe budget cuts from Congress. If so, the administration that brought us Tang, microwave ovens, and the hand-held electric drill may be forced to suspend all such exploratory missions indefinitely. Flights involving astronauts will surely become less frequent with inevitable cutbacks in funding.

For the moment, however, NASA is still planning to continue the next three missions to Mars, though many are now questioning the administration’s "faster, better, cheaper" policy. The cost-cutting measures have led to almost $370 million in lost space modules, probes, and satellites.

The disappointing lack of communication that began Friday and continued throughout the weekend may have far-reaching implications for the American space program. The Mars Surveyor Operations project headquarters, located a short drive from the Pomona campus at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, may soon become a symbol for NASA’s decline in the new millennium. Those students who were able to attend may have seen history in the making.