NASA Web Site Popular but Overloaded, Slow

NASA’s Web sites logged an estimated 40 million hits Friday as cyber surfers around the world followed Pathfinder’s search for life on Mars.

“We are really now in the electronic age and I am so proud we can get this information to everyone who wants to see it,” said NASA administrator Dan Goldin, adding that the space agency’s site was deluged even before the first pictures were beamed back.

The Internet access room at Planetfest, a three-day festival coinciding with the Mars Pathfinder landing, buzzed with activity as astronomy buffs and other earthlings anxiously awaited word from the Red Planet.

“It’s really cool,” Heather Dumas of Santa Cruz said as she logged on to one of the two dozen computers and found weather on the Red Planet was sunny and clear. “It’s much more information than I expected to find.”

But as the first images became available, NASA’s Web sites slowed to a crawl.

The Internet room emptied and people turned to a 25-foot television screen to watch the first images.

“The network is kind of saturated,” said Eric Collins, a physics graduate at Emporia State University in Kansas who tried to download fresh pictures.

The Web Interface for Telescience, accessible from any Web browser, shows several perspectives of the rover’s position and paths. Users can change the path and then run the rover to see how it interacts with its environment.

The simulation was more complicated than programming a VCR, and a test drive only resulted in the rover moving around some rocks. Eight pages of detailed instructions were available on the site.

Mouse clicks revealed panoramas or smaller pictures from various perspectives of the rover.

Even with a high-speed Internet connection, though, some users were frustrated by its slowness.

“I think maybe for kids growing up in the video age, this isn’t terribly exciting,” Glenn Glazer, a university student, said as he checked out the rover simulation.

A list of the mirror sites is available at https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mpfir. Information on Planetfest’s activities is available at https://www.planetary.org.