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Mars Pathfinder Mission Status
July 16, 1997
9 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time
The Sojourner rover moved away from the rock nicknamed Yogi and headed toward a rock dubbed Scooby Doo during Mars Pathfinder's 12th Martian day, or Sol 12, which just concluded.

The rover moved a total of 3.6 meters (about 12 feet), and has about 2 to 3 meters (7 to 10 feet) to go to reach Scooby Doo. On the way between the two rocks, the rover's alpha proton X-ray spectrometer (APXS) instrument will be taking readings of Martian soil. The science team expects for the APXS instrument to take readings of Scooby Doo on Sol 14 -- equivalent to Thursday night and Friday morning, July 17-18.

Also during the past Martian day, the lander's Imager for Mars Pathfinder (IMP) instrument captured pictures of a Martian sunrise, atmospheric opacity and the lander's windsocks. The imager is also expected to take pictures shortly of a sunset and Mars' moon Phobos.

During Sol 12, Pathfinder's lander sent a total of 65 megabits of data to Earth. All systems are functioning normally. On this Martian day, Earth rise was at 4:47 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Tuesday, July 15; sunrise was at 7:56 p.m. PDT; Earth set was at 6:26 a.m. PDT Wednesday, July 16; and sunset was at 8:54 a.m.

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