Word: landers
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...first time ever, it was going to be able to keep stirring it up well after it landed. Curled up inside Pathfinder like a mechanical kangaroo joey was Sojourner, a 1-ft.-tall, 2-ft.-long robot car, known as a rover, designed to trundle away from the lander and investigate rocks all over the desert-like site...
...touchdown was not without problems. Early pictures revealed that one of the airbags that cushioned the craft during its descent had bunched up in a way that hindered the rover from leaving the lander. In addition, the computer aboard Sojourner and the one aboard Pathfinder were having trouble communicating with each other, which prevented the rover from getting the information it needed to rove beyond the immediate vicinity of the lander. But these problems, which engineers promptly set about fixing, did little to dampen the excitement when Pathfinder sent back its stunning panoramas of the eerie orange site where...
...Pathfinder survives its inelegant touchdown unscathed, NASA scientists will waste no time getting to work. After the spacecraft gets its bearings, they'll send it a signal causing it to open up, revealing the papoose-like Sojourner rover inside. A camera on the lander will snap a picture of both the car and the landscape, and by 6 p.m. on the West Coast, NASA hopes to release the image both to the press and on the Web mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/) After that, it will at last be time for Brian Cooper to take the wheel...
...Sojourner control console at J.P.L. is equipped with a 24-in. video monitor, a 3-D mouse and a set of stereoscopic goggles. Before the rover leaves the lander, its camera will scan the terrain and transmit what it sees to J.P.L., where software will combine the images into a three-dimensional vista. Donning the goggles, Cooper and other scientists will then scout the virtual riverbed. When they find a likely place for Sojourner to visit, they'll start up the car and, using the mouse, tell it where...
...rover will not operate for long--no more than a month--before Mars' punishingly cold climate (-15[degrees]F by day but plunging as low as -125[degrees]F at night) kills it. The Pathfinder lander, also able to take readings, could function for up to a year. No matter when the machines wink out, however, Mars is unlikely to remain unattended. On Sept. 12, Global Surveyor, another robot probe, will arrive at the planet, settle into a 250-mile-high orbit and begin two years of mapping the surface. A second lander-and-orbiter pair...