Picture of the Day · NASA
Pathfinder on Mars
2026-07-04
On July 4th, 1997, using its own array of fireworks, a parachute, and a cocoon of airbags, the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft bounced like a giant beach ball at least 15 times before it came to rest on the surface of Mars at 10:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time. After its then novel airbag-assisted landing sequence was completed, Pathfinder transmitted this color mosaic to mission operators on Earth. In the scene from another world, the Mars Sojourner robot rover is visible in the foreground, crouched on top of the unfolded Pathfinder. About the size of a large house cat, the six-wheeled, solar-powered Sojourner became the first successful Martian rover. Surrounding Pathfinder are deflated airbags and the rock-strewn terrain of the Ares Vallis floodplain. In the distance Martian hills appear against a dusty brownish sky. The Pathfinder lander was subsequently renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station.
via NASA APOD
Key facts
- Discovered by
- M. Laugier
- Discovery site
- Nice Obs.
- Discovery date
- 17 October 1936
- Named after
- ASCII / ASCII (magazine) (character code and magazine)
- Alternative designations
- 1936 UB · 1975 WZ 1
- Minor planet category
- main-belt · ( outer ) , background
- Observation arc
- 81.52 yr (29,776 d)
- Aphelion
- 3.8974 AU
- Perihelion
- 2.4073 AU
- Semi major axis
- 3.1523 AU
- Orbital period sidereal
- 5.60 yr (2,044 d)
- Mean anomaly
- 264.51 °
- Mean motion
- 0° 10 33.96 / day
- Inclination
- 19.454°
- Longitude of ascending node
- 58.210°
- Argument of perihelion
- 280.22°
- Mean diameter
- 23.752 ± 0.211 km
- Geometric albedo
- 0.045 ± 0.007
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- asteroid
- Followed by
- 3569 Kumon
- Follows
- Q151840
- Parent body
- Sun
- Minor-planet group
- asteroid belt
- Diameter
- 23.752
- Orbital period
- 2040.654788002983
Show 16 more facts
- discoverer or inventor
- Marguerite Laugier
- site of astronomical discovery
- Nice Observatory
- provisional designation
- 1936 UB
- time of discovery or invention
- 1936-10-17
- orbital inclination
- 19.45180994416008
- orbital eccentricity
- 0.2340129503029039
- absolute magnitude
- 11.94
- periapsis
- 2.411767865545887
- apoapsis
- 3.885382631971278
- semi-major axis of an orbit
- 3.148575248758583
- mean anomaly
- 37.44934570549237
- longitude of ascending node
- 58.15011227385035
- argument of periapsis
- 280.8258514018535
- albedo
- 0.045
- time of periapsis
- 2460788.2189260516
- epoch
- November 21, 2025
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~3 min read
Encyclopedic overview
3568 ASCII, provisional designation 1936 UB, is a dark background asteroid from the outer regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 24 kilometers (15 miles) in diameter. It was discovered on 17 October 1936, by French astronomer Marguerite Laugier at the Nice Observatory in southwestern France. In 1988, the D-type asteroid was named after both the computer character code ASCII and the Japanese computer magazine with the same name.
Orbit and classification
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Q151842” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.