The Mars Exploration Office at JPL has been very busy with two launches late last year, and currently both Mars Global Surveyor (launched November 7, 1996) and Mars Pathfinder (launched December 4, 1996) are speeding toward Mars. These exciting missions passed each other recently, in what we half-jokingly referred to as "ships passing in the night." As of this writing, Pathfinder is more than halfway on its trajectory to Mars, while Global Surveyor, on a slower trajectory, is well into its 10-month journey.
In tragic contrast, the Russian Mars 96 spacecraft failed to get out of Earth orbit and fell back to Earth. We mourned for our Russian colleagues, knowing how much time and effort they had spent on a very ambitious mission. We sympathized because our own missions are just as ambitious, and have just as much effort and faith placed in them. But then, all space missions are relatives: they have the same hopes and dreams pinned on them, whether the purpose is taking a detailed radar portrait of our own home planet or flying to the eternally cold Pluto.
Our human family is making its next steps toward other worlds. Mars, the closest neighbor, could possibly support human life. And with the debate still ebbing and flowing about possible ancient life once existing there, the following few years should prove the most exciting of all in our Grand Journey.
Let's go!
--David Dubov