June 7, 2000

Press Contact:
Jeff Lungren (Jeff.Lungren@mail.house.gov)
(202) 225-4275

How Does NASA Know?
The Lander Crashed and The Arm Was Never Deployed

WASHINGTON, D.C. - In a recent annual performance report, NASA declared "target achieved" with the Mars Polar Lander's robotic arm, even though NASA lost the Lander probe in December, 1999. A single line of missing computer code caused the spacecraft to crash into the surface of Mars; as a result, the robotic arm-and all of the other scientific instruments aboard the Lander-were never deployed.

The Polar Lander was to land on Mars and perform an investigation of the planet's soil and climate, in part by using a robotic arm to scoop up a sample of Martian soil and analyze it for the presence of water. Knowledge about water on Mars will help answer the question of whether the Red Planet is--or ever was--capable of supporting life.

"A lot of phrases came to my mind upon hearing the Mars Polar Lander was lost. 'Performance target achieved' was certainly not among them. By demonstrating merely that the robotic arm worked prior to launch, NASA claims success in the Performance Report, even though the mission failed and the arm was never used as intended. If this is NASA's definition of success, planetary exploration just got a whole lot easier," House Science Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., (R-WI) said. "NASA's achievement is like Napoleon declaring victory when his troops were assembled before the battle of Waterloo."

According to NASA's fiscal year 1999 Performance Report, the only performance target for the Mars Polar Lander was to "Demonstrate an advanced robotic manipulator with an order of magnitude performance improvement compared to the manipulator used on Viking in 1976" [p. 12]. NASA's report continued, "Despite the later failure of the Mars Polar Lander to land successfully, the manipulator system passed acceptance tests prior to launch" [emphasis added], leading NASA to declare "target achieved."

"Such nonsense from NASA calls into question the report's credibility. I hope to hear better answers from NASA on the Mars Polar Lander when Administrator Goldin testifies before this Committee later this month," Chairman Sensenbrenner added.

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