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
Wikidata facts
- Diameter
- 4.012
- Orbital period
- 1230.00649553278
Show 13 more facts
- provisional designation
- 1979 YH3
- time of discovery or invention
- 1977-02-18
- orbital eccentricity
- 0.06840516293113992
- periapsis
- 2.092986329332263
- apoapsis
- 2.400354007154718
- semi-major axis of an orbit
- 2.246670168243491
- mean anomaly
- 192.252497184759
- longitude of ascending node
- 1.705940260295422
- argument of periapsis
- 127.6607504755411
- absolute magnitude
- 14.19
- orbital inclination
- 2.835939549856369
- albedo
- 0.302
- time of periapsis
- 2461573.6403279784
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
Article · Deutsch
(3607) Naniwa ist ein Asteroid des äußeren Hauptgürtels, der am 18. Februar 1977 von den japanischen Astronomen Hiroki Kōsai und Kiichirō Furukawa am Kiso-Observatorium (IAU-Code 381) in Kiso in der Präfektur Nagano auf der japanischen Hauptinsel Honshū entdeckt wurde. Benannt wurde der Asteroid nach dem ursprünglichen Namen der drittgrößten Stadt Japans Ōsaka, die von 645 bis 655 unter dem Kōtoku-tennō Hauptstadt Japans war und in der Toyotomi Hideyoshi ab 1580 die Burg Ōsaka erbaute.
Abstract from DBpedia / Wikipedia · CC BY-SA