ShmoopTube

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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by Mars rovers. They only WISH they were as

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cool as the new Camaro.

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Based on information found in the passage, how long did the Viking spacecraft take to

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collect data on Mars?

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We might have to revisit the passage to pin this one down, which is A-OK.

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Sometimes it helps to scan for key words like Viking.

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Of course, the word "Viking" appears quite often here, so this won't be a piece of cake.

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One thing that pos out as we're skimming though... is the date—1976, which makes

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its first appearance in line 54.

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Choice (A) tries to make us think that the spacecraft took from June 19th to July 20th,

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1976, to fulfill its mission...

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...but upon close inspection, we see this was actually the time between Vikings 1 and 2 landing.

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So we can forget about (A) and move on with our lives.

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Choice (B) claims that the spacecraft operated for ninety days.

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As we're scanning the passage we do see the phrase,

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"Originally designed to function for 90 days"

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...used in reference to the spacecraft in line 79.

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If we keep reading through line 81, however, we see that, while the Viking spacecraft were

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designed to only last 90 days, the little guys kept collecting data for six years.

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Which makes choice (D) the correct answer.

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Some people collect baseball cards or stamps; these spacecraft collected Mars data.

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Gotta have a hobby.

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