Table of Contents
- 1 What happened to the Pathfinder to make it stop working in the Martian?
- 2 When Pathfinder is working Mark Watney uses it to communicate with NASA?
- 3 When did NASA lose contact with Pathfinder in Martian?
- 4 How does Watney short out the Pathfinder probe?
- 5 How did Watney fix Pathfinder?
- 6 What was the Pathfinder mission?
- 7 What did we learn from Mars Pathfinder?
- 8 How did Watney hack Pathfinder?
- 9 How did NASA fix the code on the Mars Pathfinder?
- 10 What does Watney do for a living on Mars?
What happened to the Pathfinder to make it stop working in the Martian?
Watney follows troubleshooting instructions and realizes that when he leaned the drill against the workbench, it touched Pathfinder’s Mylar balloons, which conducted an electrical charge to Pathfinder’s hull and fried its electronics. There is no way to get Pathfinder back online.
When Pathfinder is working Mark Watney uses it to communicate with NASA?
So in order to gain contact with NASA, Watney digs up the Mars Pathfinder, the probe which NASA lost contact with in 1997. He fixes it (woo!) and the probe is able to communicate with Earth. Through a camera on the Pathfinder, Watney is able to speak to NASA through messages he writes and shows to it.
What happened to Pathfinder on Mars?
End of mission Communication failed after October 7, with a final data transmission received from Pathfinder at 10:23 UTC on September 27, 1997. Mission managers tried to restore full communications during the following five months, but the mission was terminated on March 10, 1998.
When did NASA lose contact with Pathfinder in Martian?
September 27, 1997
Five years ago, on September 27, 1997, NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory began to lose communication and battery power to the Mars Pathfinder mission, ending its highly successful exploration.
How does Watney short out the Pathfinder probe?
While working on the rover, Watney accidentally shorts out the electronics of Pathfinder, losing the ability to communicate with Earth (except for spelling out Morse code with rocks for a one-way communication). The modifications include removing the front of the MAV, which Watney has to cover with Hab canvas.
How did Watney use the Pathfinder?
In “The Martian,” Watney sets out to retrieve Pathfinder to use its radio and camera to re-establish communications with NASA after his own habitat’s antenna is destroyed in a dust storm. “We have a fully practical working Pathfinder, which we use throughout the movie.”
How did Watney fix Pathfinder?
Watney did hack the code in the Rover communications software to allow it to talk directly to Pathfinder and receive additional updates from NASA; he did this at NASA’s direction. Apparently, to do this, he patched a shared library in the software, /usr/lib/habcomm.so.
What was the Pathfinder mission?
Mars Pathfinder was an ambitious mission to send a lander and a separate remote-controlled rover to the surface of Mars, the second of NASA’s Discovery missions. Launched one month after Mars Global Surveyor, Pathfinder was sent on a slightly shorter seven-month trajectory designed for arrival earlier.
How does the Mars Pathfinder work?
Mars Pathfinder used an innovative method of directly entering the Martian atmosphere, assisted by a parachute to slow its descent through the thin Martian atmosphere and a giant system of airbags to cushion the impact.
What did we learn from Mars Pathfinder?
The Pathfinder mission led to multiple scientific discoveries about the red planet, including the following: Panoramic images of Pathfinder’s landing site at Ares Vallis and the presence of rounded pebbles and cobbles suggested that Mars had a warmer, wetter past.
How did Watney hack Pathfinder?
Watney did hack the code in the Rover communications software to allow it to talk directly to Pathfinder and receive additional updates from NASA; he did this Bear in mind that Watney didn’t actually hack Pathfinder; all he did was set it up, plug it into the Hab power, and get it working again.
What does Mark Watney do in the Martian?
Instead, he cracks jokes and keeps himself occupied with work and the media files his crewmates left behind on Mars. The The Martian quotes below are all either spoken by Mark Watney or refer to Mark Watney.
How did NASA fix the code on the Mars Pathfinder?
NASA themselves loaded new software into the probe to allow it to be better used as a communications relay. They were fully capable of doing this, and, in fact, they did exactly this in 1997 to fix a priority-inversion bug in the software. See: How did NASA remotely fix the code on the Mars Pathfinder?
What does Watney do for a living on Mars?
As the mission’s botanist and engineer, Watney is the lowest-ranked member of the crew, but his botany and engineering background give him the skills he needs to survive on Mars. Watney avoids writing about his emotions—instead, he cracks jokes.