PASADENA, Calif. (AP) _ Just two months after metrics and management doomed the last mission to Mars, NASA is about attempt the trickier task of landing a probe on the Red Planet to search for water, study the climate and analyze the atmosphere. Much more than science is now riding on the Mars Polar Lander: It's become a test of NASA's ability to explore the solar system on a shoestring budget, a trial of the ``faster, better, cheaper'' way of doing more missions with less money. ``The tension on the team is up by several factors because of what happened,'' said Richard Cook, the spacecraft operations manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, referring to the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter in September. ``People want to get back to having the feeling that we can in fact do things like this,'' he said. Polar Lander is headed for a Dec. 3 touchdown roughly 500 miles north of the planet's south pole, the first landing in the region. Scientists hope layers of dust and possibly ice will reveal secrets of Mars' climatic past during the 90-day mission. Researchers want to find out what happened to the water that is believed to have flowed across the planet. Instruments will measure vapor in the atmosphere while a claw attached to a robotic arm will collect samples to be cooked and analyzed for water. But before anything can be studied, the lander must arrive safely at its destination _ something the Mars Climate Orbiter failed to do. The orbiter and lander were both made by the same company and managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. An investigation confirmed the orbiter burned up in or bounced off the Martian atmosphere Sept. 23 because its builder, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, used pound and feet instead of metric units in a file critical to navigating the $125 million probe. It was quickly determined the same problem does not affect the lander. But more troubling were findings that JPL failed to communicate concerns with Lockheed and that navigators had a lack of knowledge about the orbiter. JPL was also faulted for understaffing and inadequate training in the Mars program. NASA's investigation uncovered potential problems with the lander, too, including one involving the cold start of thrusters whose pulses will gently guide the $165 million, 1,270-pound probe toward the surface. A fix has since been found. Officials maintain that the metrics problem was not discovered in time because rules were not followed, insisting that the space agency's policy of ``faster, better, cheaper'' missions played no significant role. ``Starting about a year ago, four interplanetary spacecraft were launched in 3{ months. All four spacecraft worked. That's a fairly impressive record,'' said JPL Director Edward Stone. ``And the cost of those four was one-third the cost of the Galileo mission (to Jupiter).'' But analysts who follow NASA disagree, arguing that shortcuts were taken because the program is increasingly understaffed and crews are overworked. ``They're basically trying to take 15-gallon trips on 10 gallons of gas,'' said John Pike, director of space policy at the Federation of American Scientists. He said the loss of the lander would force NASA to take a hard look at ``cheaper, faster, better'' _ something the report did not do. ``It's sort of like going after the Watergate burglars and ignoring Nixon,'' Pike said. ``This report seemed to be more focused on fixing the blame on incompetent middle managers than on fixing the problem of not enough people.'' A return to the days of billion-dollar missions every 10 years is unlikely, but some suggest taking steps to make the interplanetary exploration program less ambitious or update rules so they are more in line with the tight-budget era. Space agency officials say the landing is not an impossible mission. Staff have been added. Navigators are double-checking every aspect of the lander's entry, descent and landing. Scientists are working to make sure data can be returned. ``Everything that can be done is being done,'' said Carl Pilcher, NASA's science director for solar system exploration. ``There is no aspect of this mission that is not being re-examined to make sure it is the way it needs to be.'' One of the benefits of ``faster, better, cheaper'' is that the loss of a single spacecraft is not devastating to the entire program, like the 1993 disappearance of the $1 billion Mars Observer. Smaller, less expensive spacecraft now launch to Mars every two years _ when the orbits of Earth and Mars are properly aligned. But the loss of the lander could stall the campaign. ``The science of this particular mission is not decisive, but maintaining the momentum of the campaign is,'' said Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society. ``In that sense, there's a lot riding on this.''