Antennas around world listen for Mars signal

Friday, February 4th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- Giant dish antennas in Europe and North America were aimed toward Mars on Friday to begin another attempt to detect what may be a flicker of life from NASA's Mars Polar Lander.

It's the largest effort to listen for a signal since Stanford University engineers announced last month that they received an extremely faint signal that could have originated from the $165
million probe.

"We want to make sure we have checked and double-checked these data before we can confirm whether or not there is a signal," said
Richard Cook, the lander's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Engineers will not know before next week at the earliest whether any signals detected during the listening window originated from
the spacecraft. The signals would be so weak that engineers compare their job to finding a cell phone signal on Earth that originated on Mars.

The lander was to have touched down Dec. 3 for a 90-day mission to study the atmosphere and dig for water beneath the surface near
Mars' south pole. But it failed to radio its arrival.

Controllers officially gave up their search Jan. 17. Less than a week later, Stanford engineers analyzing recorded signals from their 150-foot antenna announced they might have detected a signal.

Commands beamed to Mars telling the lander to repeat the signal have failed so far.

Even with antennas in England and the Netherlands joining the Stanford instrument, the latest effort remains a longshot, said Mary Hardin, a JPL spokeswoman.

"We need to do everything we can to confirm if it was real or not," she said.