The JPL team, for example, consisted of just 10 people, each working on a given function in relative isolation and putting in 80-hour weeks. There were scattered signals that something was wrong, investigators say, but the system failed to respond. Both Lockheed Martin and JPL managers may have failed to raise alarms more clearly up the chain of command because of concern that they would lose ground in the competition for tight funding, said Thomas Young, a veteran space company executive and former NASA official who headed the independent Mars review for NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin. The agency will respond fully to all the Young committee recommendations, he said, announcing the beginnings of a restructuring. He added that officials will take a broad, open-minded approach to the full array of options for Mars.
Nothing is off the table.
A comprehensive new plan for Mars exploration will be announced in three or four months, officials said. These signals falsely indicated to the onboard systems that the spacecraft was safely on the surface. This would have prompted the braking thrusters to shut down at an altitude of about 130 feet, investigators found. The investigators then helped set up a series of four tests that pointed to this mode of failure as the culprit, Young said. Spurious signals of this type are a familiar phenomenon, and routine systems testing should have exposed the potential, he said.