By Steven Siceloff - Florida Today News
 CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA and Defense Department analysts remain
at odds over whether photos from Mars show an intact Mars Polar
Lander.
The agencies,
NASA and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, hope to settle
the issue within a few months.
NIMA interpreters,
who daily examine scores of spy satellite photographs, said pictures
show the Polar Lander made it to the Martian surface in one piece.
They have also picked out the probe's parachutes and protective
shell. NASA, however, says the analysts have confused the spacecraft
with interference from the Mars Global Surveyor's cameras.
The Mars Polar
Lander was lost in December 1999 while descending onto the planet.
Investigators theorized the probe smashed into Martian ice and
rocks. Another spacecraft, Mars Climate Observer, was presumed
destroyed three months earlier by accidentally diving into the
Martian atmosphere.
If the Polar
Lander survived, NASA will have to reevaluate the failure. The
questions come two weeks before NASA tries a return trip to the
fourth planet from the sun with its Mars Odyssey. The satellite
endured exhaustive studies and tests in the wake of the previous
mission failures.
Jennifer Lafley,
spokeswoman for NIMA, said NASA provided the agency with 40 pictures
that analysts have been studying for months. More pictures will
be examined as part of a joint review.
Part of the
problem is that the camera on the Global Surveyor was intended
to photograph much larger geographic features, such as valleys
and mountains, not a 6-foot-long spacecraft.
Charles Vick,
a space analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, said
it will take a more focused photography mission to Mars to settle
the debate.
Until then,
"I'd put (my money) with NIMA before I did with NASA in this
case," he said Monday. "NIMA does imaging analysis every
day. I just hope that they are right."
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