US abandons efforts to contact missing space probe

WASHINGTON (AFP) Dec 20, 2002
Astronomers have abandoned efforts to contact the missing CONTOUR space probe, now thought to have been destroyed as it attempted to fire its engines in mid-August, the mission's director said Friday.

"Given what we suspected about CONTOUR's condition, and that we haven't received a signal after several contact attempts, we don't believe the spacecraft is recoverable," said Edward Reynolds of Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

"At this point the project will recommend to NASA that efforts to contact the spacecraft should end, and the project will formally close down," Reynolds said.

The APL team built the 159 million dollar probe -- launched July 3 -- and manages the mission on NASA's behalf.

"A lot of people worked hard to build CONTOUR and prepare for this mission and we're deeply disappointed that it didn't work out," Reynolds added.

NASA had hoped to use CONTOUR to analyze the hearts of two comets close up, revealing the secrets of the hydrogen-rich celestial bodies to see if they could become mobile fueling stops for future interplanetary explorations.

The 970-kilo (2,140-pound) probe was to visit the comets Encke in November 2003 and Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 in June 2006, both more than 50 million kilometers (31 million miles) from Earth.

SPACE.WIRE