Pathfinder and Sojourner at Ares Vallis
Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner · 1997 CE · Mars
Prove a cheap airbag landing and drive a small rover between rocks.
Historical context
Twenty-one years passed between Viking and the next successful landing, and the mission that ended the drought was deliberately cheap. Pathfinder bounced to a stop on airbags and rolled out a rover the size of a microwave oven. It proved that Mars could be reached often rather than once in a generation.
The voyage, step by step
Fifteen bounces
4 July 1997
On 4 July 1997 the spacecraft hit Ares Vallis at fifty kilometres an hour inside a cocoon of airbags and bounced at least fifteen times before rolling to a stop.
Carl Sagan Memorial Station
1997 CE
The lander opened its three petals on the floor of an ancient flood channel, among rounded, imbricated stones.
Down the ramp
1997 CE
A six-wheeled rover of ten and a half kilograms rolled onto the soil, the first wheeled vehicle to move on another planet.
Barnacle Bill
1997 CE
The first rock analysed was a knobbly stone whose chemistry resembled terrestrial andesite rather than the plain basalt everyone expected.
Yogi
1997 CE
A metre-wide boulder a few paces from the lander, with a dust-free face on its lee side that the rover pressed its spectrometer against.
A flood plain read from the ground
27 September 1997
The last signal came on 27 September 1997, after eighty-three sols, 17,000 images and the first rock chemistry since Viking.
Outcome
Eighty-three sols of work, 17,000 images and the first rock analyses since Viking.
Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner
Airbag lander that set down in Ares Vallis in July 1997 and released Sojourner, the first wheeled vehicle to drive on Mars.
Sources
Continue exploring
- Opportunity traverse on Meridiani PlanumOpportunity · 2004 CE – 2018 CE
- Spirit traverse in Gusev craterSpirit · 2004 CE – 2010 CE
- Phoenix at the northern plainsPhoenix · 2008 CE
- Curiosity traverse in Gale craterCuriosity · 2012 CE – 2026 CE