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Mars Pathfinder Mission Status
July 27, 1997
4:30 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time
All lander and rover systems and science instruments continue to operate well on Sol 23 of the Mars Pathfinder mission. Earth rise at the landing site occurred at midnight PDT July 26; sunrise followed at 3:13 a.m. PDT today.

In keeping with the tradition of playing wake-up songs for the space shuttle astronauts, the rover and flight teams were awakened on Sol 23 to the music of the Blues Brothers' version of "Raw Hide," a 1960s television western. The song was chosen to match "a long day of driving" for the rover.

Flight Director Jennifer Harris reported that start-of-the- day images showed the rover had begun to climb up the side of the rock named "Souffle," but was not able to position its science spectrometer against the rock. Consequently, no alpha proton X- ray spectrometer data were acquired today.

"However, this did not deter the rover from executing a long traverse which took it past the lander, through the 'Rock Garden' and past a rock named 'Casper,' before coming to a stop near the rocks 'Desert Princess' and 'Baker's Bench,'" Harris said. In all, Sojourner traveled six meters (nearly 20 feet) to complete the traverse, the longest excursion it has taken yet.

Images of the traverse, as well as routine beginning and end-of-day images, were taken by the Imager for Mars Pathfinder (IMP) camera. These images will go into a "rover movie," which is being compiled by the imaging team.

The IMP imaged sunrise on Mars, Phobos, one of Mars' two small moons, and the next portion of the super panorama, Harris said. The flight team also completed its downlink of the IMP stowed-position "insurance pan," which will enable them to begin downloading another portion of the super panorama.

Tomorrow's activities will include sending the rover to a way point beyond the rocks "Calvin" and "Hobbes." There it will be instructed to turn toward a rock named "Mini Matterhorn," take a picture of it and then image the lander.

On this Martian day, Sol 23, the Earth set at 1:43 p.m. PDT and the sun set at 4:04 p.m. PDT.

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