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SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,418

Happy birthday Mars pathfinder

It is hard to believe that its been that long..20 years but without it we would probably not be still going to mars.
Landing inside a bouncing air bag cacoon.....
Pathfinder remained operational for only a little over three months, but it was crucial to the future of Martian rovers.

NASA's 1st Mars Rover Landed 20 Years Ago Today

so tiny...

Mars exploration took a big leap 20 years ago today. On July 4, 1997, NASA's Pathfinder mission touched down on the Red Planet, delivering an eponymous lander and a small rover called Sojourner — the agency's first wheeled Mars craft — to the surface. Pathfinder was the first NASA mission to reach Mars successfully since the twin Viking 1 and Viking 2 landers/orbiters in the mid-1970s, and its success helped pave the way for a robotic Red Planet invasion. In the two decades since, eight other NASA robots have reached Mars, and five of them remain active today.

https://www.space.com/37387-nasa-mars-p … rsary.html

https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/07/04/n … ploration/

https://www.space.com/16575-mars-explor … aphic.html