- PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters)
- Scientists on Saturday prepared tests to determine if the ominous silence
of the Mars Polar Lander was caused by the spacecraft purposely turning
itself off due to a minor malfunction or if the mission has been lost.
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- "We hope this is not going to be a big deal,"
said Laurie Leshin, a member of the mission's science team as she insisted
that engineers remained upbeat about bringing the spacecraft back to life
by making the first contact since it was scheduled to land safely on the
Red Planet on Friday.
-
- The three-legged, 639-pound lander failed to make contact
with Earth in three attempts by NASA scientists on Friday.
-
- Asked what happened, project manager Richard Cook said,
"We just don't know." Cook said he hoped the craft had gone into
a "safe mode" about 20 minutes after it had made a safe landing,
explaining why it had failed to call home across 145 million miles of space.
-
- He said the craft's onboard computer was programmed to
go into a safe mode if one of the lander's many instruments had failed
or was temporarily malfunctioning.
-
- "If it was asleep, which in essence is what happens
in a safe mode, then the lander would not be able to hear us when we sent
instructions," Cook said.
-
- The craft is programmed to stay in a safe mode for 18
hours and would not wake up until 6:30 p.m. PST on Saturday (9:30 p.m.
EST).
-
- A WAKE-UP CALL SCHEDULED
-
- At that time, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena will send a signal to the lander asking it if it is awake and
commanding it to start scanning the Martian sky until its main antenna
locks on Earth.
-
- If there was to be a reply from the craft, Leshin said,
it would come at about 8:30 p.m. PST on Saturday (11:30 p.m. EST).
-
- She said that if the craft was still not able to receive
commands, there is a built-in command sequence in the lander's onboard
computer to tell it to switch to its Ultra High Frequency antenna on Sunday
night and beam signals to the Mars Global Surveyor, a satellite orbiting
Mars at an altitude of 250 miles.
-
- If that succeeds, engineers can then order the craft
to switch to backup systems to bypass whatever problems it has been having,
Leshin said.
-
- However, if that fails, "Then it's time to start
worrying," Leshin said.
-
- NASA scientists said they would continue to try to make
contact after Sunday but that if there was still silence from Mars by next
Thursday night, they might lose all hope for the mission.
-
- The lander has a built-in clock and if it does not hear
from Earth for six days it begins swapping between main and backup systems
in its onboard computer and radio and then tries to contact Earth, officials
said.
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- FATE OF MICROPROBES UNKNOWN
-
- The plight of two grapefruit-sized microprobes that hitched
a ride on the lander and then deliberately plummeted to the Martian surface,
striking it at 400 miles per hour, looked even gloomier than that of the
lander.
-
- They have tiny, non-rechargeable batteries that could
run out by Monday, officials said. The microprobes also have failed to
respond to signals sent by the global surveyor. Scientists said they fear
that if they do not hear anything by Monday, they will never learn the
results of the experiment to learn whether delicate instruments can be
protected by modern-day armor that can withstand a 400-mph impact.
-
- The microprobes blasted through the Martian atmosphere
on Friday for a landing in the south polar region of the planet.
-
- The microprobes also were intended to compliment the
lander in its search for water on Mars, seen as vital in determining whether
the planet was ever capable of supporting life even in its most primitive
forms. Water also is an invaluable resource for any future manned exploration
of the planet.
-
- There were fears that America may have lost its second
space mission to Mars in three months.
-
- If the lander and the two probes have been lost, it would
represent a crushing blow to NASA's ambitious "faster, cheaper, better"
space exploration program.
-
- The Mars Climate Orbiter, a satellite and the lander's
sister ship, which was to have helped its exploration of the Red Planet
by acting as a relay station from the Martian surface to Earth, was lost
in September through human error when scientists mixed up English and metric
measurements.
-
-
-
- Comment
-
- By Jim Mortellaro <Jsmortell@aol.com 12-5-99
-
- I graduated with a degree in Electronics Engineering
from Manhattan College in 1966. While I had a number of job offers, the
one I wanted very much was the one from Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation
as it was then known, GAEC. The job was not a high paying one when I compared
it with the other salary offers I received. But what clinched it for me
was the work.
-
- I was to be assigned to the OPG&C department, on
the OAO spacecraft. Translation: Optics, Power, Guidance and Controls
(OPG&C) and the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory (OAO) spacecraft.
What an opportunity for a young guy straight out of college whose passion
was astronomy and space. And of course, by this time, I knew straight
away that I had interacted with creatures from another place, time or dimension.
And the opportunity was almost a blessing.
-
- A great astronomer in his own right, and a man who finally
wound up working with Carl Sagan, took me under his wing. His name is
Hank Courten. I hope the hell Hank is still with us, because when they
made Hank, they broke the mold.
-
- Hank was a biologist. Correct. He became an astronomer
because his avocation was astronomy and he was damned good at it. Astronomy
became his vocation. He loved it.
-
- The OAO spacecraft was a stable platform from which experiments
would look at the stars and study various phenomena. I recall that among
others, Princeton University had an experiment on board. But in order
to become a stable platform, the vehicle had to stabilize itself, look
for stars which were it's target stars, lock onto them, and then reorient
itself so that it's attitude was correct for the various instruments and
experiments to be able to do their jobs and get the data needed for future
spacecraft, such as Hubbell for example.
-
- In those days (1966), we did not really know what the
color temperature of the stars were. We did not even know what the actual
stellar magnitudes were. In other words, a star of magnitude 2 here on
the surface of the earth would be brighter once above the atmosphere.
Not only that, but the "color" temperature was not known exactly,
so that the photmultiplier tubes inside the star trackers may not recognize
the target star. It was kind of a crap shoot. But then we knew that at
the time and spent a great deal of time and money with our vendors who
were making the star trackers, in an effort at working out these details
to minimize the problem.
-
- That was my job, initially.
-
- After a while, I was assigned to the complete S&C
(Stabilization and Control) system onboard OAO. I was the youngest engineer
on the program and lapped it all up. There was, however, one big difference
between me and the other engineers. I knew I didn't know shit. Whilst
they knew they didn't know shit either, they never admitted it. So during
test and integration time, when equipment was being placed on the spacecraft,
the engineers would make stupid decisions which the technicians knew were
wrong. But whenever a tech would make a suggestion, the engineer would
usually bark at the guy and tell him to bug off.
-
- Unfortunately, the technician was usually right, the
engineer usually wrong and so, the turnover of engineers was high.
-
- After a year or so, I was the only one left. My boss,
a man named Bob Rennie whom I loved, said, "OK, kid, you're it!"
Ooof! I felt that one in the gut. But the first thing I did was go to
speak with the head technician. His name was Dale Jones and I shall never
forget the man. I had a cup a Joe with him and said, right up front, in
total innocence, "I don't know if I'm up to this job yet, aint got
enough experience and I am scared shitless!"
-
- He told me one thing. "Jim, listen to us when you
are in doubt. We can bail your ass out and we'll all look like heroes."
I told him that I would have to probably depend on him so much that all
the techs would think I didn't know anything. Which was not likely, as
I was the idiot who discovered one darlington pair of transistors in the
Rate and Position Detection system. If that transistor failed, the spacecraft
would never recover. Rate and Position Systems (RAPS) contained gyros,
inertia wheels, error signals from the star trackers, dry nitrogen thrusters
and a whole bunch of other stuff which, when combined, told the OAO how
to get into the correct attitude.
-
- This catastrophic failure modality was serious, and so
I wrote a memo and sent it on down to NASA. The big wigs there decided
to have a meeting about a fix to the problem and at these meetings, there
were an endless number of speeches by the leading politicians who knew
nothing at all (sorry NASA) about the spacecraft or it's problems. That's
why they had Grumman. But they did like to make speeches.
-
- So there I was, a 24 year old kid, in the presence of
all my bosses at GAEC, all the NASA bigwigs, and many of the program managers
from our various vendors. I recall Kollsman Instrument Corporation was
there, Ball Aerospace and, of course, GE in King of Prussia Pennsylvania,
where the OAO program manage had a big banner at the entrance to his office.
It read, "If it works, don't change it!"
-
- Good thinking.
-
- Anyway, by the time all the speeches were done and the
only guy who knew anything (rather, was supposed to know anything) about
OAO, the head of the NASA engineering team, made his speech. I will never
forget the day. Every word out of his mouth detracted from the sum total
of human knowledge. And I was not happy. In fact, I was smoking Camel
straights one after another and squirming in my seat. But the time came
for this maroon to end his speech, which by the way, took place at NASA
Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He then said, "Well,
are there any questions?"
-
- My hand shot up into the air.
-
- "Uh, what's the temperature of the sand?"
-
- "Sand? Sand? What sand?" I had him confused.
What the hell did sand have to do with this program? Was there something
he didn't know about? He squirmed a little himself and asked again, this
time, addressing the question to my boss.
-
- "What sand, what temperature?"
-
- And I responded, "The sand you have your head buried
in! That sand!"
-
- I got to keep my job and was referred to as "Little
Hitler." As for my relationship with the OAO and technicians, it
lasted until the launch. Never in the history of the program did an engineer
last that long and never have an argument or bad words with the techs.
Never. Of course they never changed the darlington pair. It was too expensive
a project to retrofit and redesign the circuits. And besides, it was highly
unlikely that this particular transistor would fail. Very reliable, well
protected circuit.
-
- Of course, the reason for the first failure was never
known, but the symptoms were very much like those which would occur if
this transistor set failed. Hmmm. At least we used feet in lieu of meters.
-
- The second launch was more successful. The OAO settled
nicely into orbit and stabilized. Unfortunately it went out of control,
as I recall. But it could not have been that little device. That little
darlington pair that Little Hitler almost lost his job over. Could it?
-
- Nah!
-
- Now, what were you guys saying about the Mars programs?
-
- Jim Mortellaro
-
- Note: Excerpted from a book as yet untitled, by Jim Mortellaro
& Al Lehmburg on the abduction phenom... Copywrite 1999, Jim Mortellaro
and Al Lehmburg
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