Former Lockheed Martin executive Thomas Young has been appointed by NASA to lead the Mars Program Independent Assessment team. It will review the failures of the Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO), Mars Polar Lander (MPL) and the space agency's approach to robotic exploration. The MCO was lost on 23 September and the MPL on 3 December.
Young, a former Viking Mars mission director and a veteran of other NASA and space industry investigations, will study the mission budgets, schedule, management structure and scientific organisation.
NASA administrator Daniel Goldin has defended his "faster, better, cheaper" policy for space exploration after the Mars spacecraft failures, and says that NASA will not go back to the days of billion-dollar programmes.
Source: Flight International
