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myNotes

Another tense moment at
Mission Control.

31 The whole team was there the next day when Spirit was scheduled to
send a signal. “We’ve got data!”
32 Steve phoned his wife. “We got it,” he said, his voice cracking.
33 But too soon the cheering died down and the smiles faded. Spirit
transmitted gibberish for two minutes and then shut off.

34 “It hit me then,” Steve said. “The whole mission could be over before
it ever really began.”

35 While Spirit’s engineers struggled to fix the ailing rover, another team
of engineers was guiding her twin, Opportunity, toward his fiery landing
on the red planet. They all knew that if Spirit couldn’t communicate and

Opportunity crashed, all would be lost.
36 The mission would be a complete failure.
37 Opportunity neared the red planet. Crack! Off came his rocket.
Opportunity burned through the Martian sky. Whoosh! His parachute
ballooned. Roar! His retrorockets thrust against gravity. Airbags deployed!
Free fall! BOUNCE . . . way up high . . . BOUNCE . . . high to the sky again
. . . BOUNCE . . . plummeting down and rebounding up again . . .
BOUNCE . . . and again . . . BOUNCE . . . and again! Opportunity
bounced about twenty-six times before rolling to a halt.

38 “BEEP!” Opportunity signaled that he had landed.

transmitted When an electronic message is transmitted, it is sent from one place
to another.
ailing Something that is ailing is not doing well or is getting weak.

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