With a last-ditch radio attempt raising nothing but interplanetary static, US space scientists were forced to admit on December 7 that the US$165 million Mars Polar Lander was almost certainly lost.

"We're at the point where I think we can safely say our expectations for the success of the mission are remote," Project Manager Richard Cook said.

The glum admission capped one of the darkest moments for the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The lander's sister ship, the Mars Climate Orbiter, was lost due to human error in September, and the two probes that accompanied the lander to the red planet also failed to call home. The latest loss added to a US$265 million loss for the latest Mars mission.

In the last-gasp attempt to get the lander to call home, the Mars Global Surveyor satellite orbiting the planet tried in vain for six minutes shortly after midnight (0800 GMT) to hail the craft. They met with a stony silence.

The same fate befell the Deep Space 2 experiment, in which two microprobes were supposed to have detached themselves from the lander and hurtled to the Martian surface at 644 kph to test NASA's new impact technology.

They, too, have failed to send any signals back and hope that they survived their crushing landing is fast fading. (Xinhua)