Requiem for a spacecraft: Pathfinder is dead

Sojourner

March 10, 1998
Web posted at: 11:54 p.m. EST (0454 GMT)

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- The Mars Pathfinder and its spunky little rover won't call home again.

Scientists failed in a final effort to contact the Pathfinder on Tuesday, and declared the craft officially "dead" four months after the end of a mission that produced the closest-ever look at the red planet's surface.

At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, team members said goodbye to the lander and its little rover, Sojourner. The team officially declared the time of death of the Pathfinder lander at 1:21 p.m. PST -- 250 days after its dramatic landing on July 4 last year.

Flight director Jennifer Harris admitted feeling "a little more emotional" than usual when she heard a colleague officially declare the end of the mission, even though the last transmission was considered a long shot.

The Pathfinder project essentially ended on September 27 when NASA scientists abruptly lost communication with the lander for reasons that have not been determined.

Stand on the Carl Sagan Memorial Station and look around Mars
	1.9 M/30 sec./320x240 966 K/30 sec./160x120 QuickTime movie

By that time, the lander already had exceeded its original mission by about eight weeks and the rover had traversed the rock-strewn terrain of Mars' surface 11 times longer than its planned one-week operation.

Scientists had expected Pathfinder to "live" in the hostile Martian environment for 30 days, but the NASA team continued to send signals to Pathfinder at regular intervals until Tuesday.

One of the first images sent back to Earth

No new attempts will be made. Instead, scientists will devote their time to poring over the 2.6 billion bits of scientific information, 16,000 images and 15 complete chemical analyses of rocks and soil sent back by the craft.

Scientists say Pathfinder has paved the way for future interplanetary missions. It was the first in NASA's new line of "cheaper, better" space missions -- which will include four more Mars landings culminating in the planned return of rock samples to Earth in 2005.

Pathfinder also touched the spirit of the nation and the world with its images of the Sojourner rover bumping along the red, desert-like surface of Mars.

Said Harris: "To the world who watched us on July 4 and in the months afterward, we say thank you for all your enthusiasm."

Reuters contributed to this report.

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