VERONICA MACGREGOR, PRODUCER, CNN LOS ANGELES BUREAU: The Mars Pathfinder landed on the 4th of July and it had a perfect landing. But by the end of that day, they knew they had a problem, and that was that the airbags that had cushioned the landing were in the way of the Rover driving off onto the Mars soil. One of the engineers on that project told me that, when he saw that first photo come back showing the airbags were in the way of the Rover getting off. His reaction was, like, oh no, we don't have an airbag problem; his reaction was, oh my god, I forgot to send up the new software to the spacecraft. That night, actually, they sent up signals, but they did not know until July 5th. They got back the photographs showing that they were able to send up commands, instructing the spacecraft then to lift up a pedal, do that one more revolution to pull back the airbag, and put the pedal back down, and it worked. And it wasn't until very, very late on the night of July 5th that they got back the first pictures showing the Rover coming down that ramp. We called Atlanta, and we got on the phone. It was 2:30 in the morning there. We begged and they broke into programming. And CNN was the only place you could see that the Rover had come off, went down that ramp, and made its first little foot prints on the planet of Mars.
CNN 20: Rover Rolls Off Mars Pathfinder, July 5, 1997