Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Five Year Retrospective: Mars Pathfinder

Posted by michael on from the go-where-no-RC-car-has-gone-before dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Five years ago today, on September 27, 1997, NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory began to lose communication with the Mars Pathfinder and ended its highly successful mission. The interview with Matt Golombek, Project Scientist, highlights Mars' warm and wet past. The still remarkable landing sequence, with first signal only 3 minutes after touchdown, seemed a rare combination of luck (bounced 16 times and landed on its base petal). Not mentioned, it cost less than the making of even a medium-sized Hollywood movie." NASA is getting ready to publish their future plans for deep-space missions.

3 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. nice first post... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    but who will drive the pathfinder to UrANUS?

  2. how do we know it wasn't a movie by Brigadier · · Score: -1, Troll



    lets be real, 5 years before blundering failure. 5 years later perfect landing with a little hollywood suspence (bouncing lander) Oooh god it's bouncing, no not again. dramatic pause after sending the uplink signal ............... beep beeep . IT WORKS !!!! it's all a hoax they never went to mars, neither did they go to the moon. They are not fooling me.

  3. Speaking of probes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Is it true that Commander Taco is going to send a cassinni probe to uranus?