Fears that America may have lost its second space mission to Mars in three months increased today after repeated attempts through the night to contact two microprobes sent to the surface by the Mars Polar Lander failed.
If the lander and the two probes have been lost, it would represent a serious blow to NASA's ambitious "better, faster and cheaper" space exploration programme. The Mars Climate Orbiter, a satellite and Lander's sister ship , were lost in September through human error when scientists mixed up English and metric measurements.
Scientists said they would not attempt to get in touch with the lander craft again until about 2.30 in the morning when signals would be sent to it to scan the Martian skies in search of Earth, and then start transmitting. If that succeeded the first signals would not be received until two hours later.
