Picture of the Day · NASA
Pathfinder on Mars
2026-07-04
On July 4th, 1997, using its own array of fireworks, a parachute, and a cocoon of airbags, the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft bounced like a giant beach ball at least 15 times before it came to rest on the surface of Mars at 10:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time. After its then novel airbag-assisted landing sequence was completed, Pathfinder transmitted this color mosaic to mission operators on Earth. In the scene from another world, the Mars Sojourner robot rover is visible in the foreground, crouched on top of the unfolded Pathfinder. About the size of a large house cat, the six-wheeled, solar-powered Sojourner became the first successful Martian rover. Surrounding Pathfinder are deflated airbags and the rock-strewn terrain of the Ares Vallis floodplain. In the distance Martian hills appear against a dusty brownish sky. The Pathfinder lander was subsequently renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station.
via NASA APOD
Key facts
- Discovery site
- Perth Obs. (Bickley)
- Discovery date
- 13 June 1971
- Named after
- Derice Harwood, (wife of astronomer)
- Alternative designations
- 1971 LC · 1927 EB, 1942 TD · 1949 YD, 1967 EB
- Minor planet category
- main-belt · Flora
~3 min read
Article
1806 Derice, provisional designation 1971 LC, is a stony Flora asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 10 kilometers in diameter. Discovered on 13 June 1971, at the Bickley site of the Perth Observatory in Western Australia, it was the first discovery of a minor planet ever made in Oceania. The asteroid was named after the wife of Dennis Harwood, staff member at Bickley.
Classification and orbit