MEDIA RELATIONS 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
Tuesday, March 10, 1998
       The long goodbye to NASA's Mars Pathfinder lander and the Soujourner rover ended today when the lander failed to respond to the final command to communicate with controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Pathfinder mission, which operated three times longer than its original 30-day planned lifetime on the martian surface, is acknowledged as one of NASA's most successful endeavors as a dramatic example of the space agency's new style of "faster, better, cheaper" planetary exploration.

       Today's last-ditch effort to listen for a signal from Pathfinder effectively ends the mission, said project manager Brian Muirhead. No further attempts will be made to communicate with Pathfinder, he added.

       Pathfinder flight controllers Ben Toyoshima and Rob Smith at JPL spent nearly four hours today alternately commanding the lander to turn on its transmitter, then listening for a response via NASA's Deep Space Network's 34-meter antenna at Goldstone, California, in the Mojave Desert. One-way radio communications to Mars from Earth take nearly 20 minutes.

       The final Pathfinder telecommunications session ended at 1:21 p.m. PST when no transmissions had been detected from Pathfinder.

       A description of today's efforts to reestablish contact with Pathfinder can be found at the following URL: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/readme.html

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