Mars is a red, red planet & now we are looking for green men

Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, on tenderhooks since morning, exulted “We’re there!” when the first signal arrived at 1.07 EST that Pathfinder had landed safely in an area called Ares Vallis. A short time later they began to “Twist and Shout” – literally, for they began playing the Beatles song of the same title. It was hard not to be elated by their infectious enthusiasm as they hugged each other with schoolboyish joy.

In a quieter moment, they explained that Pathfinder hit the Martian surface at some 25 miles and bounced three times, the first time as high as a three-storey building, before plonking down. The Martian atmosphere was thinner than they thought it would be.

The gravity was fifteen times that on Earth. The spacecraft came down on a rock-strewn field which seemed relatively flat. It showed only a two degree incline at landing.

In fact, after the landing, Pathfinder flashed a semaphore – a diagnostic signal – that showed it had come down almost perfectly, base petal down.That meant the tetrahedron-shaped spacecraft would not have to be put through any exercise to go rightside up. “This is nirvana for us guys,” said Brian Muirhead, the flight systems manager.

A couple of hours later, as the sun rose on the frigid Martian landscape – signalling the start of Sol 1 — a Sol being a Martian day equal to 24 hours and 37 minutes of earth time – the solar panels opened like petals to kick in the onboard computer. Soon Pathfinder began all other automated landing tasks, including 42 cranks of a winch to retract the giant air bags that cushioned its impact. And this is where it ran into the first glitch.

For reasons the scientists were unable to explain, the airbags had not been pulled in completely.

The first pictures showed the cream coloured bags spread out like a deflated parachute caught underneath the spacecraft. NASA said it did not pose a great problem. They have contingency plans to raise the sides of the spacecraft and pull in the flappy bags. This will enable them to put down the ramp so send out the Pathfinder rover.

That means the Pathfinder’s six-wheeled, 23 pound buggy named Sojourner will have to wait till the Martian morrow before it rolls out and begins to sniff around the red planet. Scientists said they will send it out to rocks that look promising. Not the typical red dust covered, lifeless looking Martian rock, but maybe something darker that would suggest that there was life sustaining water on the planet. While Sojourner will spend at least a week traversing the Martian terrain, taking pictures and analyzing soil and minerals – before it possibly runs out of energy – the main craft itself will spend a minimum of a month taking pictures and studying the atmosphere and weather.

Scientists believe Ares Vallis is an area through which torrents of water flowed through during catastrophic floods aeons ago. They hope the Sojourner’s alpha proton X-ray spectrometer can determine the mineral content of nearby rocks so that they can assess if the planet was one a warmer, wetter place where microbial life could have developed.