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Mars Climate Orbiter successfully blasted off a Kennedy Space Center launch pad for a 9-month journey to the Red Planet on Friday, December 11, 1998. The spacecraft will arrive in martian orbit in September 1999, where it will serve as a weather satellite for a fu ....

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.... will go into orbit around the asteroid Eros in January. Mars Global Surveyor and Lunar Prospector continue to function beautifully. Future missions include gathering samples of the martian moons Phobos and Deimos, firing a 1,100 lb. copper projectile into comet P/Tempel 1, studying Jupiter’s interior, globally imaging and studying Mercury, and measuring the composition and circulation of Venus’s middle atmosphere. This article told me much about the past, present, and future missions. We are certainly learning more about the other planets in our solar systems, especially Mars, and I believe that we are doing the right thing in ....