Some of the excited engineers and staff on landing day.
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Headlines declare: Mars Pathfinder Lands on July 4th
The Mars Pathfinder was launched in December 1996 aboard a Delta II rocket. The spacecraft entered the Martian atmosphere on July 4th, 1997 with a Viking-derived heat shield and landed with the help of parachutes, rocket thrusters, and airbags.
After impact the lander deployed its three solar panels for power. Later on the camera will map its surroundings, and the Sojourner rover will be positioned for deployment to the surface.
Eons ago it is thought that water flowed on the plains of Mars. The rocky plain that Mars Pathfinder is landing on is thought to be a previous flood plain. Its name is Ares Vallis. The Sojourner rover will use alpha proton x-ray spectrometry on rocks to take elemental composition measurements. The Ares Vallis landing site was chosen for the variety of rock and soil samples it may present.
Mars Pathfinder will finish its surface mission in August 1997.
Mars Pathfinder is a NASA Discovery Mission. The Pathfinder program was developed in three years and costs under $280 million dollars. It is actually the first of NASA's Discovery Program low-cost series of planetary missions. The motto of the program has become "faster, better, and cheaper"!
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