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 14, 1997
10 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time
Mars Pathfinder's lander sent about an hour's worth of data to Earth last night -- including portions of a 360-degree color panorama image -- before the lander's computer appeared to reset itself, terminating the downlink session.

Engineers are continuing to debug the reset problem, which appears to be related to software that manages how the lander's computer handles a number of different activities simultaneously. "Saturday night, we 'serialized' activities by having the lander do one thing at a time, whereas last night the lander was handling a number of activities when the reset occurred," said Brian Muirhead, Mars Pathfinder flight system manager. "Tonight we will return to a 'serialized' approach to try to avoid the possibility of a reset." The reset occurred at 1:06 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), about halfway through a planned two-hour downlink session.

Data received during last night's downlink session indicated that the Sojourner rover is positioned against the rock nicknamed Yogi, with its alpha proton X-ray spectrometer (APXS) instrument in place to study the rock’s elemental composition. Data from the APXS should be received tonight; the science team will then decide whether to move the rover.

After rover data, the next highest priority for tonight is to complete the 360-degree color panorama image.

Last night's downlink session was during Sol 10, or Pathfinder's 10th Martian day. On Sol 10, Earth rise occurred at 3:27 p.m. PDT Sunday and sunrise was at 6:36 p.m. PDT. Earth set was at 5:07 a.m. Monday, followed by sunset at 7:35 a.m. Tonight the flight team expects to hear from the Pathfinder lander during downlink sessions beginning at about 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. PDT.

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