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WASHINGTON — NASA's best effort to find a missing Mars space probe has failed, as scientists at the space agency began to lose hope for the 10-year-old planet-mapping workhorse.

After more than two weeks of silence from the Mars Global Surveyor, NASA will make other tries, but scientists began to sound resigned Tuesday.

"We may have lost a dear old friend and teacher," Michael Meyer, the lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program said in a news conference.

The $154 million surveyor, which was expected to operate for just two years, is the oldest of five different active space probes on or circling the red planet.

Among its accomplishments are its more than 240,000 pictures of Mars, offering the best big-picture view of the red planet.

"Every good thing comes to an end at some point," said Arizona State University scientist Phil Christensen. "It certainly in my mind greatly exceeded our wildest expectations of what to hope for. It revolutionized what we were thinking about Mars."

On Monday night, NASA had hoped to catch a glimpse of the surveyor from the camera on the new Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. But the orbiter failed to spot it.

Now NASA will try an even less likely search effort. Engineers will send a signal to the silent spacecraft, asking it to turn on a beacon on one of the two Mars rovers below. If the rover beacon turns on, NASA could figure out where the lost Mars Surveyor is, said project manager Tom Thorpe.

NASA will keep trying small-scale efforts to contact the probe through the end of the year.

Launched on Nov. 7, 1996, the probe gave scientists the best topographic map of any planet in the solar system, said Cornell University astronomer Steve Squyres.

The probe also gave Earth its first detailed views of massive dust storms and gullies. It also revealed a new mystery about Mars: It once had a magnetic field.