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Mars Pathfinder [1] was an American robotic spacecraft that landed a base station with a roving probe on Mars in 1997. It consisted of a lander, renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, and a lightweight, 10.6 kg (23 lb) wheeled robotic Mars rover named Sojourner, [4] the first rover to operate outside the Earth–Moon system.
Ares Vallis was the landing site of NASA's Mars Pathfinder spacecraft, which studied a region of the valley near the border with Chryse in 1997. Ares Vallis is in the Oxia Palus quadrangle of Mars. It has been argued that Uzboi , Ladon , Margaritifer and Ares valles, although now separated by large craters, once comprised a single outflow ...
The lander touched down on Mars on July 20, 1976, the first successful Mars lander in history. Viking 1 operated on Mars for 2,307 days (over 6 1 ⁄ 4 years) or 2245 Martian solar days , the longest extraterrestrial surface mission until the record was broken by the Opportunity rover on May 19, 2010.
Astronomers reflect on the 25th anniversary of the Mars rover landing, the first wheeled robot to roam a planet.
The Viking 1 lander touched down on the surface of Mars on July 20, 1976, more than two weeks before Viking 2 ' s arrival in orbit. Viking 2 then successfully soft-landed on September 3. The orbiters continued imaging and performing other scientific operations from orbit while the landers deployed instruments on the surface.
The robotic Sojourner rover reached Mars on July 4, 1997 as part of the Mars Pathfinder mission. Sojourner was operational on Mars for 92 sols (95 Earth days), and was the first wheeled vehicle to operate on an astronomical object other than the Earth or Moon.
Mars Pathfinder's Sojourner rover and the Mars Exploration Rovers each used this landing technique successfully. The Phoenix Scout lander descended to the surface with retro-rockets, however, their fuel was hydrazine , and the end products of the plume (water, nitrogen, and ammonia) were not found to have affected the soils at the landing site.
The first NASA rover, Sojourner (on the Mars Pathfinder lander), and twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity, used a combination of parachutes, retrorockets, and airbags for landing. Curiosity, launched in 2011, weighs nearly 900 kg, and was too heavy to be landed this way, as the airbags needed for it would be too heavy to be launched on a rocket. [2]