Word: soils
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
Happily, this was a problem NASA had foreseen. In J.P.L.'s so-called sandbox, a roomful of Mars-like rock and soil with a mock-up lander and rover, the engineers had rehearsed a fairly straightforward maneuver that called for Pathfinder to raise one petal, tilting the entire craft 45[degrees], retract the deflated bag further and then lower the petal. The signal to execute the maneuver was sent up shortly before Earth set over the Martian horizon, breaking the communications link until dawn; just before the connection was actually severed, a picture came back confirming that the command...
...Planet in 1998, 2001 and 2003. In 2005 the agency hopes to exceed even these ambitious plans, launching the first-ever round-trip Mars ship, one capable of landing somewhere on the surface, then flying back to Earth carrying with it a few precious handfuls of rock and soil...
...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...
...Barnacle Bill" by scientists, in order to determine its composition. A neighboring rock nicknamed "Yogi" is next. Once Sojourner receives the steering signals broadcast by NASA late Monday, the scrappy little craft will amble over to the new rock at a speedy clip of one centimeter per second, studying soil characteristics along the way. NASA has yet to release any detailed information from Sojourner's chemical analyses, beyond a few hints about indications of past life on the Red Planet. But the agency is releasing a stream of striking panoramic shots taken by the rover and Pathfinder that provide convincing...