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By Steven Siceloff - Florida Today News
CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA and Defense Department analysts remain
at odds over whether photos from Mars show an intact Mars
Polar Lander.
The
agencies, NASA and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency,
hope to settle the issue within a few months.
NIMA
interpreters, who daily examine scores of spy satellite
photographs, said pictures show the Polar Lander made it
to the Martian surface in one piece. They have also picked
out the probe's parachutes and protective shell. NASA, however,
says the analysts have confused the spacecraft with interference
from the Mars Global Surveyor's cameras.
The
Mars Polar Lander was lost in December 1999 while descending
onto the planet. Investigators theorized the probe smashed
into Martian ice and rocks. Another spacecraft, Mars Climate
Observer, was presumed destroyed three months earlier by
accidentally diving into the Martian atmosphere.
If the
Polar Lander survived, NASA will have to reevaluate the
failure. The questions come two weeks before NASA tries
a return trip to the fourth planet from the sun with its
Mars Odyssey. The satellite endured exhaustive studies and
tests in the wake of the previous mission failures.
Jennifer
Lafley, spokeswoman for NIMA, said NASA provided the agency
with 40 pictures that analysts have been studying for months.
More pictures will be examined as part of a joint review.
Part
of the problem is that the camera on the Global Surveyor
was intended to photograph much larger geographic features,
such as valleys and mountains, not a 6-foot-long spacecraft.
Charles
Vick, a space analyst with the Federation of American Scientists,
said it will take a more focused photography mission to
Mars to settle the debate.
Until
then, "I'd put (my money) with NIMA before I did with
NASA in this case," he said Monday. "NIMA does
imaging analysis every day. I just hope that they are right."
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