PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Mars Pathfinder Mission Status
July 11, 1997
11:15 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time
Commands for the next day of activities for Mars Pathfinder were not sent last night because the Pathfinder spacecraft's receiver had not been turned on in advance of the uplink session.

NASA's Deep Space Network conducts a routine frequency sweep before uplink sessions each day. The Goldstone, CA station initiated this sweep yesterday at about 1:35 p.m. PDT, when it came online. Because Pathfinder's receiver is only turned on at specific times each day to conserve power, it was not scheduled to be turned on until 1:46 p.m., an 11-minute miscalculation. Therefore the planned command link to the spacecraft was not established.

The operations team did not discover the problem until it was ready to begin its downlink session at 9:12 p.m. PDT last night. That 30-minute downlink would have been followed by a later downlink of data at 10:30 p.m. to 12:20 a.m.

The lost transmission session did not impact the mission in any way, except to delay the rover and lander activities. The operations team will retransmit the same set of sequences tonight during the 8 p.m. PDT session.

Activities planned for today will repeat the tasks not completed yesterday, including backing Sojourner down from Yogi and repositioning its science instrument against the rock. A full color panorama is also planned.

Meanwhile, all spacecraft and rover systems are performing well. Today is Sol 8 of the Mars Pathfinder mission.

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