PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Contact: Stephanie R. Zeluck
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 7, 1997
IMAGES AND DATA FROM MARS PATHFINDER TO BE EXPLORED IN TALK
Images and scientific results from NASA's Mars Pathfinder
mission will be discussed in a free public lecture Thursday,
August 21, at 7 p.m. at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Seating
is limited and will be on a first-come, first-served basis.
Presenting the lecture will be Dr. Matthew Golombek, Mars
Pathfinder project scientist. Golombek, who has worked on the
Pathfinder mission since its inception, has been a research
scientist at JPL in geology and planetary geology for 14 years.
He will present his personal experiences as part of the
Pathfinder team, as well as images and science results returned
from the mission.
Millions of people around the world shared in the excitement
on July 4 when the Pathfinder spacecraft, protected in a cocoon
of inflated airbags, bounced to a successful and safe landing on
the surface of Mars after a seven-month flight.
At the end of the lander's primary mission on August 3,
Pathfinder had returned more than 1.2 billion bits of information
and more than 9,000 images of the Martian landscape. The mission
has met and exceeded its primary goal: to demonstrate a low-cost
way of delivering an instrumented lander and free-ranging rover
to the surface of Mars.
The lecture will be held in JPL's von Karman Auditorium,
4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena. The event is part of the von
Karman Lecture Series presented monthly by JPL's Public
Information Office. A web site on the lecture series is located
at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/lecture . Directions and other
information are available by calling the Public Information
Office at (818) 354-5011.
The Mars Pathfinder mission is managed by the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology.
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