Mission controllers at JPL are continuing to work to regain regular communications with the Mars Pathfinder lander, which has been silent save for a few brief signals since late September.
     Regular communications between Earth and the lander have not resumed since September 27. During that time brief signals were received on at least two occasions, leading officials to believe the battery on the lander had run out and the spacecraft was trying to rely solely on its solar panels.
     "The lander is not dead in any way, shape of form. There is nothing in the data to this point to indicate any degradation," project scientist Dr. Matthew Golombek said.
     Engineers believe that if the batteries are discharged, then the spacecraft would have lost power to its timer to let it known when to perform certain activities, like communications to the Earth. Since September 27 contact has been made with Pathfinder only twice: a brief signal received from its backup transmitter on October 1, and another set of signals October 7. No signals have been received since then.
     "Everything we have seen over the last 10 days is like a twisty little maze with passages all alike," said acting mission manager Jennifer Harris.
     There is no evidence of other problems with the spacecraft. JPL officials said the Sojourner rover is programmed to drive back to and circle the lander should contact be lost for at least five days, as is the current case, so it is within communications range of the lander.

The European Space Agency has scheduled the second launch of the Ariane 5 booster for October 28, after completing a final set of tests and preparations for the launch of the heavy-lift booster.
     The key work for the launch has focused around the development of a "filter" to reduce vibrations in the main Vulcain engine on the booster. Earlier tests showed the booster vibrated more than expected, requiring more hydraulic fluid to keep it stable. ESA and Aerospatiale managers will decide if the filter is needed after final tests are completed by later this week.
     Engineers have also completed a number of other verification tests for the launch of Ariane 502, clearing the way for a launch on the 28th.
     The launch is just the second for the giant booster, and the first since the June 1996 maiden launch ended in the explosion of the rocket less than 40 seconds after launch. The booster was destroyed when it veered off course. The problem was traced to a bug in the software for the guidance system.

Problems with the orbit of a remote sensing satellite and the complete failure of a communications satellite have hit the Indian space program in recent weeks.
     The Insat-2D satellite, launched in June on an Ariane booster, failed on October 4. The satellite suffered a power failure, which caused the satellite to lose its orientation. This in turn caused the solar panels on the satellite to lose their lock on the Sun, shutting down all systems on the satellite and making any recovery impossible. The satellite was written off as lost the next day.
     The failure especially hurt the National Stock Exchange in Bombay, which relied on the satellite for its communications system. The stock exchange was shut down for several days until stock exchange terminals could be linked through the older Insat-2A satellite. The shutdown cost about two billion dollars in lost transactions.
     At the same time, engineers successfully struggled to get a new remote sensing satellite working after it was placed in the wrong orbit after launch September 29. The Indian Remote Sensing IRS-1D satellite was placed into an elliptical orbit ranging from 300 to 823 km (186 to 514 mi.), instead of a circular orbit 817 km (506 mi.) high.
     Controllers were able to adjust the satellite into a 550 to 820 km (343 to 512 mi.) orbit, the minimum necessary to get the necessary images from the satellite. The first images were returned and released October 8.
     The satellite is designed to return images for use by the Indian government and commercial agencies to study the environment of the Indian subcontinent. IRS-1D was launched by India's own Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), marking the first successful satellite launch using that booster.
     The loss of Insat-2D means India may have to turn to foreign satellites for a year or more until a replacement satellite can be launched, a tough move for a country that was proud of its self-sufficiency in satellite production. "It is not devastating, it is short-term," said a spokesman for the Indian Space Research Organization. "We have had to rely on foreign satellites before."

An Atlas booster launched a direct broadcast satellite into orbit while a Russian Soyuz booster launched a Progress resupply capsule to the Mir space station on the same day earlier this month.
     An Atlas IIAS booster launched the Echostar communications satellite into orbit October 5. The launch took place at 5:01pm EDT (2101 UT) from Cape Canaveral, less than two hours before the scheduled landing of the shuttle. Weather delayed the shuttle's landing but did not affect the Atlas launch. The Echostar satellite will be used for direct broadcast of television channels.
     A Soyuz booster launched the Progress M-36 cargo spacecraft from Baikonur, Kazakhstan October 5 at 11:08am EDT (1508 UT). The spacecraft carried food, water, experiments and other equipment, including a backup central computer for the station.
     Th spacecraft, scheduled to dock October 7, was delayed one day when the undocking of Progress M-35 from Mir was delayed one day. The first docking attempt October 6 failed when one docking clamp was not removed. The old Progress spacecraft, filled with trash, undocked a day later, and Progress M-36 docked on October 8.