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| | The Planetary Society: Missions to Mars |
 | | When Pathfinder arrived at Mars on July 4, 1997, it passed directly through the atmosphere, shed its heat shield, fired its retro-rockets, deployed a set of airbags and then bounced to a stop on the martian surface, all within four minutes of arriving at the Red Planet. |
 | | Mars Climate Orbiter was lost on September 23, 1999, when a mathematical conversion error placed the spacecraft too close to Mars at the time of orbital insertion. |
 | | Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, scheduled for launch in August 2005, will search for evidence that water persisted on the surface of Mars for a long period of time using a large and powerful suite of instruments. |
| www.planetary.org /learn/missions/marsmissions.html (2939 words) |
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