This past July , the Mars Pathfinder mission
captivated tens of millions of people around the globe
and changed the way we view the red planet.The staff at
the Jet Propulsion Labrotory ,(J.P.L), in pasadena,
California,giddy with smiles from ear to ear,looked like
chrildren on christmas morning at their regular press
briefings.just over two weeks after the landing,
they reported that the probe had already fulfilled
the expectation of the (planned) one-month
mission, and with the images and data being
recived daily,there was surely no one feeling
disappoint.
The mission marked a number of firsts in
space exploration.A novel method was used for the
Pathfinder'S landing;instead of first orbiting the
planet and then commencing a slow,controlled entry ,as
done in the past,this probe simply pluged into the
atmosphere and crash-landed on yhe surface.Curiously,
this was much the same method used by Martian
speceships landing on earth in H.G.Wells' classic
science fiction work the War of the Worlds--a
landing method conceived in the day when hot-air
ballons were the only mode of air travel.
After nearing the planet, the pathfinder separated
from its cruise stage,and thrity minutes later,hit the
atmosphere at 26200 kilometers per hour,cousing a 20-G
deceleration force .this was tempered by a rock-and-silicon
shell,a parachute, a retro-rock,and a cushion of
airbages, Each step of the landing was jubilantly reported
a success.
The grestest mileston was,of course,the
Sojourner rover,the first mobile probe on a foreign
world.The six-wheeled land over ,roughly the size
of a micro wave oven ,was able to cruise about the
Martian surface investigating rocks and other
targets with photography and X-ray spectrometer
It was operated by controllers at J.P.L,working with
a 61-centimeter video monitor,a 3-D mouse,and
special goggles-191 million kilometer away
Commands took eleven minutes to reach the rover and
another eleven to be acknowledged.
All of this came at a time of renewed interest in
space,an interest cultivatee by face and fiction.This
include the discovery in Augest last year of what
scientist claimed to be evidents of ancient life on
Mars;and ongoing U.S-Russian cooperation aboard
the Mir space station;and an upsurge in the
popularity of science fiction films.Moreover,with
J.P.L and others managing numberous Internet sites that
pump out instant information and photographs to the
wrold ,the new interest in space is likely to continue.
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