Word: surveyor
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Last week reinforcements showed up when one of Pathfinder's robotic littermates--the Global Surveyor--arrived at the planet and swung into orbit. Though the landers are likely to wink out within months, the Surveyor orbiter will be studying the planet's surface and atmosphere for years to come. When it's done, NASA should have a better picture than it's ever had of Mars' chemistry, meteorology and perhaps even biology. "We want to understand the evolution of water in that atmosphere," says Arden Albee, Surveyor project scientist, "and whether life could possibly have existed on Mars...
...meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Albright and Palestinian President Arafat left both sides skeptical (TIME Daily)... Scots go to the polls today to vote on a plan for a Scottish Parliament, but will they give it "Tartan Tax"-raising powers? (TIME Daily) ... NASA's Martian "spy satellite," Global Surveyor, begins its first orbit of the Red Planet (TIME Daily) ... Twenty years after South African security police beat him to death, Steve Biko is getting his day in court (TIME Daily) ... National Security Adviser Samuel Berger tells the Senate campaign finance probe that he saw no evidence of "extraneous" influence...
Expect more dramatic pictures from the Red Planet tomorrow as the Mars Global Surveyor settles into orbit for a three-year high-altitude mapping mission...
...result has been immediately felt. Pathfinder cost $171 million to build, and its Sojourner rover only $25 million. The Global Surveyor orbiter, set to join them at Mars in the fall, carried a price tag of just $152 million. Other ships being developed have had their prices slashed similarly. On the whole, the average cost of a single unmanned spacecraft has plunged from $590 million between 1990 and '94 to $190 million today, and Goldin hopes to get even that pennywise figure down to only $77 million after the turn of the decade. "Because the spacecraft cost less," he says...
More, indeed. Though Pathfinder and Surveyor will be claiming the attention of Mars scientists for the immediate future, there's a small fleet of similar ships poised to fly. Every 26 months the orbital minuet that Earth and Mars dance around the sun brings them close enough to make interplanetary travel practical. NASA plans to take advantage of those exploratory windows, sending at least three other lander-orbiter pairs to the Red 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...