Nozomi Abandoned by Japan Space Agency

rufey writes "Space.com is reporting that officials at JAXA, Japan's space agency, were unable to fix the problems plaguing Nozomi and have therefore abandoned all efforts to get it to orbit Mars. The main problem is lack of fuel. Instead of surveying Mars, JAXA is planning on using the probe, as it orbits the Sun, for other things such as solar activity. This is just one of four Mars probes that are scheduled to arrive at Mars in the next 60 days."

Comments

Mars curse claims another probe

[bandy]

One down, a few more to go:

• January 2004: two US rovers
  
• EASA's Mars Express arrives in about 15 days with British Beagle 2 due to land in 14-15 days
  

That is very sad, but...

[dnahelix]

I am personally disheartened at this. I was rooting for the Japanese to have a successful Mars mission.
I am glad to see that they can possibly still use it for solar monitoring. As of now, if SOHO goes down, we have no solar monitoring from space.
Good luck to Japan in finding a use for NOZOMI.

Re:iq/sanity tests for expenditure 500mil please

[Red Rocket]

...but they can't put a damn thing on surface or orbit of mars and the one time they did it was all screwed up?

Exactly how many craft have you landed on Mars, screwed up or otherwise? If you think it's so easy why don't you do it yourself?

It's easy to be a critic and bash scientists and governments but it's a whole lot harder to actually design, plan, and execute these missions. These people are trying to do something important and extremely difficult. They need support, not armchair rocket scientists.

Re:Marvin the Martian.

[!3ren]

Where's the Kaboom?
There was supposed to be a giant Kaboom!