Oct 8 1997
From The Space Library
After more than nine days without sending a signal, Mars Pathfinder's main transmitter resiliently delivered a message to Earth. To anxious project managers, the message was a welcome relief. The breakdown in the spacecraft's communication to NASA controllers had necessitated NASA's activating a contingency plan for Sojourner. The rover had stopped gathering data and reverted to slowly circling its parent spacecraft, waiting to receive directions, a pattern that some scientists feared would be the long-term fate of the rover. The spacecraft's aging batteries had caused the breakdown in communication of data. However, in spite of the malfunction, NASA officials reiterated that the mission had fulfilled its objectives, emphasizing that solving the problem of communicating with the craft while it was resting on the Red Planet would benefit future explorations of Mars.
Mars Pathfinder scientists announced that Mars appeared to have a crust, a mantle, and an iron core-attributes similar to those of Earth. The researchers suggested that Mars may once have been warm and wet, although they remained unable to determine whether Mars had a molten core, such as that of Earth or Mercury, or a "dead" core, such as that of the Earth's Moon. The findings contributed to growing evidence that Mars might be more than a solid ball of rock and that the planet might once have had water and life. Signs of possible erosion and weathering encouraged such hypotheses, as well, although scientists clarified that proof of such theories was still probably years away.
A Russian cargo spacecraft docked without incident at the Mir space station, using the craft's automatic pilot to complete the maneuver. It was the first successful docking after two previous failed attempts, one of which had resulted in the crash that seriously damaged Mir. To address the earlier problem, the Russian Space Agency had reconfigured the mathematical formula guiding the procedure. The Progress M-36 cargo craft carried a backup computer for the space station. Mir's crew planned to unload the more than 6,000 pounds (2,700 kilograms) of cargo in the days following the delightfully uneventful docking.
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