NASA's Surveyor Loses Contact for a Week
13th Nov 2006, 18:11 GMT
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor has been out of contact with Earth for nearly a week and engineers tried Friday to re-establish communication with the craft, which may be showing its age after 10 years in space. The space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena lost contact with the probe for two days last week, then received a weak carrier signal with no data on Sunday. Since then, Surveyor has not confirmed receiving a command to point one of its transmitters to Earth, project manager Tom Thorpe said. The Global Surveyor was launched on Nov. 7, 1996, to systematically map Mars while orbiting the Red Planet. Operating longer than the other Martian exploration craft, Surveyor originally was launched as a $247 million mission to last for nearly two years. The mission has received extensions since then.
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