This was probably asking too much of the team, Stephenson said. Members felt stressed and overworked, which undoubtedly contributed to the errors. Still, he emphasized that the report was not meant to be an indictment of JPL, but should be used to ensure that natural mistakes are detected and remedied before they destroy a spacecraft. When pressed by reporters about what action NASA would take, Weiler was adamant that the report's conclusions are not to be applied personally. Weiler asked rhetorically.
Humans make errors, humans make bad judgements sometimes.
We have to find why those errors weren't caught. JPL Director Edward Stone also emphasized that the focus of the investigation and the report should be on safeguarding the Mars Polar Lander, which is just three weeks away from landing on Mars. The loss has complicated the mission of the Mars Polar Lander, which is on its way to Mars and scheduled to touch down December 3. Mission officials insist that the same problems that doomed the orbiter will not affect the lander, but the two spacecraft were part of the same mission and were designed to work together. The Climate Orbiter was to have served as a communications and data relay station between the Polar Lander and Earth.