"JimO" wrote in message .. .
Japan admits its Mars probe is failing
After weeks of uncertainty, space agency says team is struggling with Nozomi
?s power system glitch

http://www.msnbc.com/news/996466.asp

By James Oberg, NBC NEWS SPACE ANALYST

Nov 21 -- After months of silence and a week of hopeful half-truths,
Japanese space officials have finally confirmed that their Mars-bound Nozomi
probe is teetering on the brink of failure in its five-year quest to explore
the Red Planet.

During this voyage it became the first human space vehicle to make an
Earth-Mars-Earth round trip after navigation and power problems thwarted
original plans. Ingenious flight planning and fine-tuned space navigation
gave the probe an unprecedented second chance to reach Mars. But that
genuine 'space odyssey' now appears doomed.

Of course, the biggest negative effect of this will not be the loss to
information about Mars. Nozomi had little to offer that current Mars
orbiters haven't already shown us. The biggest effect will be to make
any Mars Sample Return mission in the future vastly more difficult.
After all, the quarantiners will say, if Nozomi can fail and plow into
Mars, possibly spreading earth bacteria, what's to prevent a Mars
return vehicle from doing the same thing to earth, resulting in
AAAAAAHHHH! The Andromeda Strain!

The result will raise the cost of Mars Sample Return for redundancy,
and realistically probably prevent it from happening for the
forseeable future.

Tom Merkle