NASA reviewing its Mars programme

"It is conceivable that we will completely change our approach," NASA administrator Dan Goldin said, adding "clearly something is wrong, and we have to understand it."

Loss of the polar lander is "a crushing blow for the mars programme," NASA’s associate administrator Edward Weiler admitted.

Meanwhile, at NASA’s jet propulsion labortory in Pasadena, California, operations manager Richard Cook told reporters that his flight team had "played its last ace" in trying to reach the spindly three-legged craft.

Critics have accused NASA of trying to do too much with too little money with its "faster, better, cheaper" approach in which smaller and less expensive probes are launched more often than in the past. The policy was started after the 1993 disappearance of the one-billion-dollar mars observer.