LOS ANGELES, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Scientists failed to contact the Mars Global Surveyor, which went missing in space, indicating that the surveyor's mission was at an end, officials said on Tuesday.

    During the decade-long mission, the Mars Global Surveyor took more than 240,000 photos of the Red Planet, but the orbiter has been silent since Nov. 2.

    Officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Los Angeles County said a problem with a solar panel has left the craft powerless to communicate with Earth.

    "Realistically, we have run through the most likely possibilities for re-establishing communication, and we are facing the likelihood that the amazing flow of scientific observations from Mars Global Surveyor is over," said Fuk Li, Mars Exploration Program manager at JPL. "We are not giving up hope, though."

    NASA's newest Mars spacecraft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter,pointed its cameras toward the Mars Global Surveyor on Monday, but found no trace of the craft.

    Mars Global Surveyor was launched on Nov. 7, 1996, and began orbiting Mars from Sept. 11, 1997. It pioneered the use of aerobraking at Mars, using careful dips into the atmosphere for friction to shrink a long elliptical orbit into a nearly circular one, NASA officials said.

    The spacecraft began its primary mapping phase in April 1999. The original plan was to examine the planet for one Mars year, nearly two Earth years. Based on the value of the information collected by the spacecraft, NASA extended its mission four times.

    "It is an extraordinary machine that has done things the designers never envisioned despite a broken wing, a failed gyro and a worn-out reaction wheel," said Tom Thorpe, project manager for Mars Global Surveyor at JPL.

    "The builders and operating staff can be proud of their legacy of scientific discoveries and key support for subsequent missions."

    The spacecraft evaluated landing sites for the twin NASA rovers that landed in 2004 and sites for future landings of the Phoenix and Mars Science Laboratory missions. It monitored atmospheric conditions during aerobraking by later orbiters and it served as arelay link for the rovers, and provided mapping information about their surroundings.

    NASA officials said they will continue efforts to regain contact with the spacecraft and determine exactly what happened to it.