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
- Discovered by
- N. Chernykh
- Discovery site
- Crimean Astrophysical Obs.
- Discovery date
- 22 September 1973
- Named after
- Elena Polonskaïa , (Russian astronomer)
- Alternative designations
- 1973 SB 3 · 1941 SD, 1948 QH · 1966 VC
- Minor planet category
- main-belt · Flora
- Observation arc
- 70.93 yr (25,909 d)
- Aphelion
- 2.7721 AU
- Perihelion
- 1.8777 AU
- Semi major axis
- 2.3249 AU
- Orbital period sidereal
- 3.55 yr (1,295 d)
- Mean anomaly
- 107.39 °
- Mean motion
- 0° 16 40.8 / day
- Inclination
- 4.9106°
- Longitude of ascending node
- 0.8717°
- Argument of perihelion
- 24.849°
- Mean diameter
- 4.625 ± 0.163 km , 4.804 km
- Mean density
- 1.6 g/cm (est.)
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- asteroid
- Named after
- Elena Kazimirtchak-Polonskaïa
- Followed by
- 2007 McCuskey
- Follows
- 2005 Hencke
- Parent body
- Sun
- Minor-planet group
- asteroid belt
- Diameter
- 4.625
- Orbital period
- 1294.713870604227
Show 17 more facts
- discoverer or inventor
- Nikolai Chernykh
- site of astronomical discovery
- Crimean Astrophysical Observatory
- provisional designation
- 1973 SB3
- time of discovery or invention
- 1973-09-22
- orbital inclination
- 4.90833455496821
- orbital eccentricity
- 0.1924201916122642
- periapsis
- 1.877452830375754
- apoapsis
- 2.772125603547522
- semi-major axis of an orbit
- 2.324789216961638
- mean anomaly
- 248.1797472731888
- longitude of ascending node
- 0.8509066425585908
- argument of periapsis
- 24.70318159019216
- absolute magnitude
- 13.09
- albedo
- 0.354
- rotation period
- 3.1183
- time of periapsis
- 2461402.653422833
- epoch
- November 21, 2025
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~4 min read
Encyclopedic overview
2006 Polonskaya (provisional designation: 1973 SB3) is a stony Flora asteroid and asynchronous binary system from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) in diameter. It was discovered on 22 September 1973, by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Chernykh at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in Nauchnij, on the Crimean peninsula, and later named after Ukrainian astronomer Elena Kazimirtchak-Polonskaïa. Its one-kilometer-sized satellite was discovered by an international collaboration of astronomers in November 2005.
Classification and orbit
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “2006 Polonskaya” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.