Soderblom is a member of the research staff of the Astrogeology Program of the United States Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona. For the past 25 years, he has either led or been involved with many NASA Solar System explorations. He has chaired and participated on numerous exploration planning and advisory committees. Soderblom also has participated in a number of planetary exploration missions including Mars Mariners 6, 7 and 9, Viking, Voyager, Magellan, Galileo, Cassini, New Millennium Deep Space 1, as well as Mars Pathfinder, Mars Global Surveyor, and the recently selected Athena rover investigation for the Mars 2001 mission.
The U.S. Mars exploration program will be underway for many more years. Commencing with the Mars Pathfinder landing in Summer of 1997 and the orbital operations of the Mars Global Surveyor that Fall, the NASA Mars program will launch two spacecraft every Mars opportunity (26 months) leading to a Mars sample return mission in 2005.
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