Reporters swarmed NASA headquarters
today when it was announced that the space
agency's Mars-bound research spacecraft, Pathfinder
Lander was finally heard from. Officials received
their first video signal Saturday morning,
which was an image of a Burger King Whopper
wrapper.
"At first we were thrilled.
We thought we'd finally found concrete evidence
of life on Mars," said one JPL scientist.
"But when more pictures came in containing
Pokeman characters and Barney, we reevaluated
our conclusions.
After lengthy review, we began
to suspect that the space probe was still
in the proximity of the planet earth."The
miscalculation apparently resulted from the
NASA personnel's confusion about the spacecraft's
weight. One scientist, who asked to remain
nameless, explained the error. "Mickey over
in engineering once told me 'That thing weighs
a ton' and I took him seriously. But I guess
it weighs much more than that. So my thrusters
allocation never got it out of earth's atmosphere."
The Martian Lander, which scientists
assumed for months was headed for the red
planet, has been circling the earth all this
time. It finally set down four weeks ago in
the yard of nine-year-old, Ricky Foster Jr,
of Escondido, California, who had been using
the spacecraft as a secret fort. "It was cool,"
said the boy.
"I've been sending messages
to NASA for weeks now, saying how close we
were getting, what speed it was going, temperatures,
stuff like that. I just made things up and
they bought it. Where I goofed up was when
they requested video pictures. I should've
never videotaped that Whopper wrapper. But
I sure had 'em going for a while."
Asked what he wants to be when
he grows up, he said, "A NASA scientist or
engineer. I'm not too good at math, but I
don't think that matters much."
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