PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- The Mars Global Surveyor has successfully unfolded its high-gain antenna that had been retracted against the spacecraft's body since it was launched in November 1996.
"The antenna is deployed and we just got telemetry," Mary Hardin, a spokeswoman for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Sunday evening. "Everything looks like it's working perfectly."In the deployed position, the dish-shaped antenna can move on gimbals to transmit data to Earth and receive commands while the spacecraft's instruments continuously map the planet.
The antenna had been kept folded after Mars Global Surveyor began mapping the red planet earlier this month because of the possibility that a mechanism to dampen the force of the boom's deploy-ment would not work.