NASA's best efforts to find a missing Mars space probe have failed, scientists said as they began to lose hope for the 10-year-old planet-mapping workhorse. After more than two weeks of silence from the Mars Global Surveyor, NASA will make other tries to locate it, but scientists were pessimistic. The $154 million surveyor, which was supposed to last only two years but continued sending data for almost a decade, is the oldest of six different active space probes on or circling the red planet. Now NASA will try an even less likely search effort. Engineers will send a signal to the silent spacecraft, asking it to turn on a beacon on one of the two Mars rovers below. If the rover beacon turns on, NASA could figure out where the lost Mars Surveyor is.
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