Word: martianize
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...communication glitch between the lander and the rover took longer to resolve, but by late Saturday engineers believed they had synchronized the two systems and were cautiously declaring that that problem too was licked. Simply because Sojourner was now able to take to the Martian plains, however, did not mean that the going would be anything but painstakingly slow. For all its anthropomorphic sweetness, the plucky rover is a rather dimwitted machine. Its route from rock to rock will be programmed for it by a controller at a J.P.L. console, those instructions will be relayed to it through the Pathfinder...
...anywhere else in the cosmos? Already Pathfinder has revived morale in the global space community. More important, it continued the only known cultural-exchange program anywhere in the cosmos. Mars and Earth, after all, have been throwing rocks and machines at each other for eons. Last summer an ancient Martian meteorite gave the creatures of Earth the first compelling evidence of life beyond our own. This summer the creatures on Earth answered back, sending our sister planet evidence not just that terrestrial life exists, but that it is--when it tries to be--wonderfully intelligent...
...landers carried a $50 million biology lab with some 40,000 components--pumps, chambers, filters and electronic parts--all packed into a 1-cu.-ft. box. On orders from Earth, Viking 1 stretched out a spindly mechanical arm, reached down, scooped up a heaping tablespoon of reddish Martian soil and, in effect, swallowed...
...soup"--a nutrient broth--gave off a burst of oxygen. In another, unexpectedly large amounts of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide were released. While both results produced flurries of excitement at J.P.L., scientists eventually--though reluctantly--concluded that the gases resulted not from life processes, but from some exotic Martian chemistry. Their conclusion was bolstered when neither lander detected any organic compounds that would have signaled the presence of microorganisms, dead or alive...
...computer in his home to view some pyrotechnics of the digital kind. Gore had been following Pathfinder's progress all day. And now he was seeing the first images, sent by E-mail to a few top officials before they were made public. The color mosaic of the rocky Martian landscape as seen from Pathfinder so excited Gore that he rushed back to his White House office after the fireworks to download still more pictures. It was close to midnight before he went home...