Call it an exercise in anxiety. In a little over a year the Mars Pathfinder mission will land a small roving robot on Mars, giving planetary scientists their first close-up look at the Martian surface in 20 years. Unlike the Viking missions of the 1970s, done in costly style with two lander-orbiters, Pathfinder is arriving alone on a bulletlike trajectory. That leaves one chance to get the choicest scientific data about the planet's surface—and one chance to lose the entire mission if the lander falls on a steep slope or on a large rock. Last month, after two-and-a-half years of balancing considerations of scientific interest arid safety, the Pathfinder project scientists finalized their choice of a landing site.
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