Word: floodplains
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There was, of course, no one in Mars' Ares Vallis floodplain to mark the moment when NASA's 3-ft.-tall Pathfinder spacecraft dropped into the soil of the long-dry valley. But there was a planet more than 100 million miles away filled with people who were paying heed when it landed, appropriately enough, on July 4. For the first time in 21 years, a machine shot from Earth once again stirred up the Martian dust. More important, for the first time ever, it was going to be able to keep stirring it up well after it landed. Curled...
Just getting Pathfinder from Cape Canaveral to Ares Vallis required a remarkable bit of cosmic sharpshooting. Mars is only 4,200 miles across--about half as big as Earth--and the floodplain NASA was aiming for is only 60 miles wide. The barest flutter in the spacecraft's trajectory could have caused Pathfinder to swing far wide of its destination. To prevent the ship from straying too far from its ideal path, the flight plan included five different opportunities for midcourse corrections during which the spacecraft's thrusters could be fired to refine the trajectory. Over the course...
Though Sojourner won't get anywhere fast, where it does go should hold a lot of secrets. Ares Vallis was chosen as the landing site in the first place because the now dusty basin was once the largest known floodplain in the solar system. Water rushed into the valley at up to 170 m.p.h., carrying a giant spelunker's bag of rocks with it. Without venturing very far from where the lander set down, the rover could thus use its cameras and X-ray spectrometer to sample geology from all over the planet. Sojourner is scheduled to conduct these studies...
...tall and 2 ft. long, the boxy, six-wheeled, 22-lb. car is nobody's idea of a roadster. But while Cooper will be at the controls at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., the car will be 119 million miles away, touring the arid Ares Vallis floodplain on Mars...
...blow. Both a parachute and a retrorocket will slow its plunge, and an array of airbags will inflate to cushion the shock of landing. And finally, the spacecraft will simply drop to the surface, striking the ground like a beach ball and rolling to a stop in the ancient floodplain...