 The Adventures of Sojourner The mission to Mars that thrilled the world 8 1/2" x 11" 64 pages Paperback US $9.95 Hardcover (library binding) $22.95 |
By Susi Trautmann Wunsch |
 t looked like something you might find under a Christmas tree, a shiny little remote control car to guide around the back yard.It was indeed shiny and little, and it did work by remote control. Its driver, however, was 119 million miles away and its back yard was Mars. On July 4, 1997, after a 7-month flight from Earth, a spacecraft was released from a parachute 40 feet above Mars. Cocooned in an ungainly mass of air bags, it slammed into the red Martian dust, bounced along like a giant beach ball and rolled to a stop. Nestled safely inside the spacecraft was Sojourner - the little rover that could. This is the story of a memorable mission and its unlikely hero: from the planning, to the blastoff, to the intentional crash landing, to Sojourner's first appearance on Mars, to two months of hazardous navigation along the rocky road of Mars. And every day the same question had to be answered all over again. Would the darn thing work? | |