Scientists at Stanford University looking for a signal from the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft came up nil again.
Mission managers for the Mars Polar Lander announced Monday that the Stanford team would continue to analyze the data in the hope that that more detailed analysis might reveal a signal.
Meanwhile, additional radio telescopes around the globe have offered their services to help scientists confirm whether the signal picked up by Stanford last week is from the Polar Lander.
Offers of help have come from an array of fourteen 82-foot antennas at Westerbork in the Netherlands, as well as the 250-foot antenna at Jodrell Bank, near Manchester, England, and an array near Bologna, Italy.
"The international community has shown a real interest in being involved in our search. We appreciate their efforts and I think it shows that Mars is something that captivates everyone's imagination," said Richard Cook, project manager for the Mars Polar Lander at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
NASA's Deep Space Network will send new commands to the lander around the clock on Tuesday and Wednesday. These commands will order the spacecraft, if it is working, to reset its clock and send a signal to Earth.
On Friday, 4 February, windows will open for the antennas in the Netherlands, England, and Italy to begin listening. The antenna at Stanford might also listen during these windows.
The one-way light time from Earth to Mars is currently about 16 minutes. Presently Mars is about 181 million miles from Earth.
The Mars Polar Lander is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, Colorado, is the agency's industrial partner for development and operation of the spacecraft.
