SpaceCast
Pathfinder Special Reports ....................................... July 4 , 1997
Airbag Deflation Next Step
WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 4 1:25 PM EDT The next event for the newly-landed Pathfinder will be the deflation of the airbags which encased the landing craft for its historic touchdown on Mars today. These bags will take about one to one and a half hours to be deflated and retracted below and behind the four petals of the lander, which are still closed around the base camp of the lander and the rover.

If Pathfinder, as has been indicated by early data, landed on its base petal, then the process of retracting the bags and preparing the craft for petal opening will be greatly simplified. About three full hours have been allotted by mission planners for the retraction of the bags and the deployment of the petals. New digital data will not be received from Pathfinder until around 5:07PM EDT today, when the spacecraft will acquire the newly risen Earth and report back on both its health and the weather at the landing site. Right now, the spacecraft's X-band radio receiver will be powered down to allow the electronics within to cool . NASA must now wait for the Earth to rise above Mars' horizon for a better position for the craft's low-gain antenna to transmit data later on today.

This afternoon's historic events in space seem to have occurred right ontime and without any incident. Pathfinder set down on the surface exactly at its aiming point, and the tricky airbag deployment sequence was as programmed.

As the spacecraft's touchdown was confirmed by carrier signal, applause and cheers broke out in Mission Control at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif. NASA chief Daniel Goldin and space science chief Dr. Wes Huntress mingled with flight controllers, slapping engineers on the back and hailing the historic landing, the first by an American spacecraft in 21 years. Pathfinder was one of Goldin's "faster, better, cheaper" ideas in planetary exploration -and thus far, Goldin's vision seems to have been confirmed by a tiny spaceship that has crossed the dark between worlds and continued the exploration begun a generation ago by the Viking landers. 'This has been", said one NASA engineer, "a textbook landing."

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