Inside the Mars Rover Missions By Bill Farrand I think the
longest 11 minutes I ever experienced in my life were those 11
minutes on the evening of Jan. 3, 2004. I, along with other
members of the Mars Exploration Rover science team, were
assembled in our science operations working group meeting room
at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., awaiting the
landing of the rover Spirit in Gusev Crater. We had been
listening with anticipation as the mission engineers reported on
Spirit's progress in its passage through the Martian atmosphere.
Described to the press as "six minutes of terror," Spirit
apparently had survived that perilous journey with flying
colors. In fact, the rover had just sent back a signal saying
that its airbag landing system had deployed and that it was
bouncing, but then... silence. Heavy on all our minds were the
recent failure of the Beagle 2 lander and the twin failures in
1999 of the Mars Polar Lander and the Mars Climate Orbiter. We
had all invested so much time and energy in thes