Its waiting for the sun to wake up.
>
> If Earth is/was not in the lander's sky,
> how did Mission Control know that it landed safely?
It used its low gain antenna to broadcast the landing signal, but was
shut down because its battery power is needed to open the petals of the
craft to have it ready for dawn, when it can start generating power
again with the solar cells on the inside of the petals. The low gain
antenna broadcasts at a very low baud rate because it is
omnidirectional, and uses up lots of power to do so. The high gain
antenna uses less power but has a higher baud rate because it is
directional, and can focus the broadcast straight toward earth.
Usage of the low gain antenna will only be used on a regular basis in
case the high gain antenna fails to operate properly, or is damaged,
much like what happened with the Galileo probe. WIth the high gain
antenna, we can receive over 500 stereo pictures a day, while the low
gain only allows a couple dozen mono at most.
>
> Anybody know where on Mars it landed?
It landed 565 miles south of the Viking site on an alleuvial plain made
up of sediments washed down from the highlands.
-- TANSTAAFL!!! Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ mailto:retroman@tpk.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/Mikey's Animatronic Factory My Own Nuclear Espionage Agency (MONEA) MIKEYMAS(tm): The New Internet Holiday Transhumans of New Hampshire (>HNH) ------------------------------------------------------------ #!/usr/local/bin/perl-0777---export-a-crypto-system-sig-RC4-3-lines-PERL @k=unpack('C*',pack('H*',shift));for(@t=@s=0..255){$y=($k[$_%@k]+$s[$x=$_ ]+$y)%256;&S}$x=$y=0;for(unpack('C*',<>)){$x++;$y=($s[$x%=256]+$y)%256; &S;print pack(C,$_^=$s[($s[$x]+$s[$y])%256])}sub S{@s[$x,$y]=@s[$y,$x]}