Pathfinder Scientists

Brian Stonehill (Commentary, July 9) misrepresents the anthropomorphizing of the Sojourner microrover and the Pathfinder IMP camera as a “poetic conspiracy.” In truth, it is simply the unorchestrated enthusiasm of individuals who have invested a large fraction of their lives over the past four years to make the Pathfinder mission to Mars the success that it is.

The technology required to position a rover within a few centimeters of a desired rock on a planet 120 million miles from Earth is deceptively complex. To characterize Sojourner as “a high school student’s erector-set project,” as Stonehill does, is to trivialize the engineering challenges that were met to put the necessary capabilities into a package small enough to fit within the payload constraints of the Pathfinder lander.

It is the nature of complex, one-of-a-kind engineering systems that they exhibit quirks and peculiarities in their performance. It is also natural for those of us who build and operate these systems to ascribe to them “personality,” since we must learn their quirks well in order to operate them successfully.

The team members I work with are both thrilled and humbled by what we have accomplished. What we have done is to place a lander and rover on the surface of Mars, generating unprecedented scientific return for less than a tenth of the cost of the Viking missions in the 1970s. We make no apologies for what Pathfinder has done, or how we describe it.

ANDREW MISHKIN

Pasadena