Mars Lander Reports Rip NASA

The long-awaited independent reports on the probable cause of the Mars Polar Lander's failure last December were unveiled at a news conference Tuesday afternoon at NASA headquarters in Washington.

As expected, the review was highly critical of NASA, reports CBS News Space Consultant Bill Harwood.

The early shutdown of rocket engines as the spacecraft approached Mars was cited as the "most probable cause" for the failure.

In an independent investigation, a committee found that sensors on the landing legs of the spacecraft could have sent spurious signals to the onboard computer, causing it to command the engines to stop too soon, CBS News Correspondent Jerry Bowen reports.

The early shutdown, said the report, would allow the craft to smash into the Martian surface at about 50 mph, fast enough to destroy it.

Other causes for the failure were possible, the report said, but the engine shutdown was the most likely.

Two probes that were to land independently after being carried to Mars by the mother ship also failed.

But the investigators said there were inadequate data to determine the most likely cause of those losses.

The Mars Polar Lander was launched Jan. 3, 1999. All radio contact was lost Dec. 3 as the spacecraft approached the red planet.

Just three months earlier, its $125 million companion Mars Climate Orbiter was lost in space due to a simple math error: failure to convert English units to metric. It was a reflection, say investigators, of exploration done on the cheap -- under-funded by 30 percent.

All that lead to: "Inadequate analyses, inadequate tests, inadequate staffing and inadequate training. All of which combined to result in unacceptably high risk," Young said.

The twin failures were all the more stunning in the wake of the hugely successful Pathfinder mission -- also run by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the California center in charge of NASA's Mars program. But NASA officials say these Mars missions crossed a line, trying to send two probes for the pric of Pathfinder.

"They both failed. We found the boundary," said Ed Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator. "We found the boundary and we're stepping back from that boundary."

A second report from another independent panel that assessed the whole NASA Mars exploration program was highly critical of the management and organization system at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"The current organization at JPL is not appropriate to successfully manage the Mars program," said the report of the Mars Program Independent Assessment Team.

The report said NASA, JPL and the nation's aerospace industry have the capability to mount a Mars exploration effort, but there are "significant flaws" in the way the program is now managed.

NASA says it's a lesson learned -- that more staffing, training and funding will be part of a revamped Mars program. But as NASA's chief signaled last week, no heads will roll.

"Not one employee is going to be fired," NASA Administrator Dan Goldin said. "They've destroyed themselves enough! I've got to tell you, they're down in the dumps, but we're gonna recover."

Now the question is what happens to the NASA missions already in the planning stages?

"In 2005, NASA hoped to launch a mission to go get rock and soil samples and bring it back to Earth for analysis," Harwood told CBS News Anchor Dan Rather. "They were going to launch a lander and an orbiter in 2001 going to launch another lander and orbiter in 2003. They said today that the lander next year has been cancelled, it's on hold indefinitely and if I had to bet I would say that the 2005 mission faces a delay almost certainly."

CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report