Mars Pathfinder Mission Status

9 May 1997


The spacecraft remains in good health and is currently about 107 million kilometers from Earth. We performed our third Trajectory Correction Maneuver as scheduled on May 6. The purpose of this maneuver was to make a small correction in the trajectory and to test our implementation approach for a potential contingency maneuver just before Mars entry. The maneuver consisted of three components: a 0.4 m/s lateral burn away from Mars, a 0.1 m/s axial mode burn to correct arrival time, and a 0.5 m/s burn back towards Mars. All three burns were performed without incident, and placed us on a trajectory that is closed to our desired Mars entry trajectory. We will perform the final planned maneuver (TCM-4) on June 24 to clean up TCM-3 execution errors. The spacecraft is now back into quiescent cruise mode. The total flight time since launch is now 156 days, and we have 56 days until Mars arrival.


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