The mission operations team at APL has yet to hear a signal from the CONTOUR spacecraft, which has been out of contact since a scheduled engine firing Aug. 15.

Two objects, believed to be spacecraft segments, were detected the following day, and a third more distant object has since been found. They remain on a trajectory predicted by early observations, although they have now traveled so far from the Sun and Earth that more observations are unlikely.

Monitoring of the comet-exploring spacecraft hase been scaled back to once a week. The reduced schedule will continue until early to mid-December, when, for two to three days, the Earth will be near the center of the multidirectional pancake antenna's beam width. This will be the best alignment of spacecraft and Earth since the anomaly and the best chance the team will have for making contact.

On Aug. 26, NASA announced the appointment of an investigation team that will examine all aspects of the CONTOUR mission. The group is expected to report its initial findings to NASA in six to eight weeks.