NASA Chief Blames Self for Botched Missions

P A S A D E N A, Calif., March 30, 2001 -- 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.

Lander Likely Burned Up

The problem could have been easily resolved by beaming newsoftware to the lander during its 11-month cruise — if it had beennoticed, said John Casani, a former JPL chief engineer who led oneof the investigations. The lander was last heard from Dec. 3.

Mars Climate Orbiter was lost Sept. 23 when nobody realized thatLockheed Martin Astronautics delivered navigation data in English units rather than metrics. The $125 million craft burned up in theMartian atmosphere.

Their combined cost was about the same as the last successfulspacecraft to land on Mars — Pathfinder in 1997.

Since 1993, NASA’s budget has decreased by 5 percent. Duringthat period, 146 payloads valued at $18 billion were launched.About $500 million worth of that was lost, Goldin said