Jul 9 1997
From The Space Library
NASA reported receiving 265 million hits on its Web site during the four days following Mars Pathfinder's landing. In response to what some observers called the "biggest event in computer network history," NASA buttressed its own computers with donated equipment from corporate sponsors, so that the government site could handle the high volume of viewers. The Internet statistics validated the widespread popularity of the mission to Mars. The CNN network dedicated nearly half of its programming to the Pathfinder story on the day of the Mars landing, doubling its network ratings. Entrepreneurs sold a variety of Mars- and Pathfinder-themed products, and visitors jammed the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. USA Today summed up the success of the Mars Pathfinder Mission: "NASA's successful landing on the Red Planet has set off a Marsfest on the blue one."
NASA announced the retirement of veteran astronaut Jeffrey A. Hoffman, who had flown on five Shuttle missions. Hoffman planned to continue his NASA service, becoming NASA's European representative in Paris. Hoffman was one of the four astronauts to take part in the spacewalking mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in 1993. In total, Hoffman had spent more than 1,200 hours in space and traveled more than 21.5 million miles (35 million kilometers).
The crew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia lit more than 200 small fires, testing the flammability of dozens of gases and materials. The experiments took place under the direction of Paul D. Ronney, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Southern California. Ronney explained that the experiments had as much application for Earth as for space. According to Ronney, the weaker the flame in space's weightless environment, the cleaner its fuel would burn on Earth. The astronauts found that, without the effect of gravity, the flames often formed the shape of a ball and heat did not rise. The experiments created some attention for Mission STS-94, largely overshadowed by the success of the Pathfmder mission to Mars.
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