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Mars Pathfinder Mission Status
July 10, 1997
2 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time

dot.gifSeven days into surface activities on the Mars Pathfinder mission, all spacecraft systems and instruments are continuing to perform well. The rover remains in excellent health and appears to be driving a little bit faster when left to its own devices than when it receives instructions from Earth.

dot.gif"Basically the rover overshot its target rock, Yogi, by a little bit last night," explained Dr. Justin Maki, of the University of Arizona, who is a member of the Imager for Mars Pathfinder (IMP) team. Maki showed a movie of Sojourner as it approached the large boulder and began to climb up its side with one wheel. In this type of dead reckoning, the rover performed just as it should have, which was to back off the rock once it knew the rock was in the way, then turn and move away from the object. Although the rover travels about 1 centimeter per second (about 2 feet per minute), it appeared to be moving a little bit faster on its own.

dot.gifThe science team targeted the left side of Yogi for alpha proton X-ray spectrometer study because it appears to be dark and free of Martian dust. However, that side turned out to be tricky for the rover because of the rock's uneven contours and the slight depression in the soil beneath the rock. The rover team will instruct Sojourner to attempt instrument placement again tonight. Multiple attempts to position the science instrument were anticipated, making this repeat attempt nothing out of the usual.

dot.gifThe navigation team also announced the Ares Vallis landing site coordinates today as 19.33 degrees north latitude, 33.55 degrees west longitude.

dot.gifDr. Carol Stoker of NASA Ames Research Center showed some of the virtual reality products that her team is beginning to produce from the Pathfinder data during today's press briefing. Data from the lander camera's stereo images are overlain with terrain models to create the three-dimensional perspective, which can then be rotated in any direction on any plane on a computer screen. The 3-D perspective will be very useful to the science team in planning rover traverses and in analyzing data.

dot.gifDr. Julio Magalhaes, also of NASA Ames Research Center, a member of the atmospheric structure instrument/meteorology package (ASI/MET) on board the Pathfinder lander, reported that upper atmospheric temperatures are extremely cold. Temperatures at an altitude of 80 kilometers (50 miles) above the surface were 171 Celsius (minus 275 degrees Fahrenheit). In the lower atmosphere, between 60 km to 13 km (37 to 8 miles) above the surface, the temperatures are warmer and very close to those recorded by the Viking landers of the mid-1970s.

dot.gifThe next scheduled press briefing will be held at 12:00 Noon Pacific Daylight Time on July 11 in JPL's von Karman Auditorium.

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