NASA Chief Blames Self for Botched Missions

P A S A D E N A, Calif., March 30 -- NASA Administrator Dan Goldin is takingthe blame for last year’s botched Mars missions, saying he pushedtoo hard, cut costs and made it impossible for spacecraftmanagers to succeed.

But Goldin said he will not abandon the National Aeronautics andSpace Administration’s “faster, better, cheaper” approach.Mission managers will get enough money and personnel to do the job,but there won’t be a return to the days of big, expensivespacecraft.

“We’re going to make sure they have adequate resources, butwe’re not going to let the pendulum swing all the way back,” Goldin told employees of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where MarsPolar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter were managed.

Goldin visited the lab Wednesday, a day after two reports werereleased on the recent Mars fiasco. The reports found mismanagement,unrealistic expectations and anemic funding were to blame as muchas the other mistakes that doomed the missions.

No Single Person Carries Blame

“In my effort to empower people, I pushed too hard,” Goldinsaid. “And in doing so, stretched the system too thin. It wasn’tintentional, and it wasn’t malicious. I believed in the vision, butit may have made some failure inevitable.”

Richard Cook, project manager of the lander and orbiter at the JPL, agreed with the reports but said no single person should be blamed.

“We’re all part of this,” he said. “The constraints werecertainly part of it, but some of the ways we did business couldstand to be improved.”

Investigators found resources were spread too thin for success.Too many risks were taken by skipping critical tests or overlookingpossible faults. And nobody noticed or mentioned the problems untilit was too late.

The $165 million Mars Polar Lander was most likely doomed by asensor that mistook a spurious signal for landing when the legsdeployed, causing the descent engines to cut off while it was still130 feet above the planet’s surface.