A 125 million USD NASA aircraft that had traveled to around 420 million to Mars has vanished under mysterious circumstances. This happened for the second time in the short span of six years that NASA has lost its spaceship on its mission to Mars. The “Mars Climate Orbiter” which was sent to mars to study the planet’s weather and to look for any form of life and water apparently flew too close to the planet and broke apart and burned up, the space agency said. NASA top management ruled out any mechanical problem or technical failure.

Previously in 1993 NASA’s 1 billion USD “Mars Observer Probe” disappeared in the same fashion as this one has. NASA’s goal is to launch such expeditions at least once in every 26 months. However the failure of such missions discourages the funding which it gets from the U.S Congress. NASA boasts that its mission to mars, i.e. “Mars Pathfinder” which was sent in 1997, was a huge success. This pathfinder was a tiny land rover, which even took photos of Mars’s surface. However there has always been a debate on the authenticity of these photos.

The Climate Orbiter was last heard on 2.06 AM just after five minutes after its main engine had fired in order to slow the speed of the aircraft so that it would be captured in the orbit of the planet.

The Orbiter carried instruments which were designed to study the weather pattern on mars. The information was the key to understanding whether some form of life existed or can exist in mars.

In the year 1993 the Mars Observer vanished when its fuel line was pressurized before it reached the orbit of the planet. A panel investigating the matter concluded that the fuel line probably broke because of the large distance traveled by the space craft.

According to Carl Pilcher of NASA's Office of Space Exploration "When you're launching missions at such a vast and rapid rate, there is simply statistically a greater trend that you're going to have a loss".

The failure of such space crafts which are highly sophisticated raises a finger of suspicion. Do they really met with an accident or some external force devastated the orbiters? Even the NASA’s team is trying to figure out what the truth really is. Perhaps the time will tell what the truth exactly is and what the fate of these orbiters was.

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