On July 4, 1997, NASA's Mars Pathfinder mission arrived on Mars and began transmitting images from the surface of the Red Planet.
The rover, named Sojourner, was the first rover to successfully land on Mars. Sojourner was accompanied by a lander named the Carl Sagan Memorial Station. The mission used an innovative landing system to touch down on the surface. NASA cocooned the rover with airbags to cushion the impact after a parachute slowed down the fall. Pathfinder touched down in a region of Mars called Ares Vallis — an ancient flood plain that NASA chose because it was relatively safe but still had plenty of rocks to study. While the Pathfinder lander took pictures of the Martian sky and collected meteorological data, the Sojourner rover studied Martian rocks and soil with its three cameras and an Alpha Proton X-ray Spectrometer, which allowed it to analyze the chemical composition of samples from the surface.
The rover, named Sojourner, was the first rover to successfully land on Mars. Sojourner was accompanied by a lander named the Carl Sagan Memorial Station. The mission used an innovative landing system to touch down on the surface. NASA cocooned the rover with airbags to cushion the impact after a parachute slowed down the fall. Pathfinder touched down in a region of Mars called Ares Vallis — an ancient flood plain that NASA chose because it was relatively safe but still had plenty of rocks to study. While the Pathfinder lander took pictures of the Martian sky and collected meteorological data, the Sojourner rover studied Martian rocks and soil with its three cameras and an Alpha Proton X-ray Spectrometer, which allowed it to analyze the chemical composition of samples from the surface.
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TechTranscript
00:00On this day in space.
00:03In 1997, NASA's Mars Pathfinder mission arrived on Mars
00:07and began transmitting images from the surface of the Red Planet.
00:10The rover named Sojourner was the first rover to successfully land on Mars.
00:14Sojourner was accompanied by a lander named the Carl Sagan Memorial Station.
00:19The mission used an innovative landing system to touch down on the surface.
00:22NASA cocooned the rover with airbags to cushion the impact after a parachute slowed down the fall.
00:28Pathfinder touched down in a region of Mars called Eris Valis,
00:31an ancient floodplain that NASA chose because it was relatively safe but still had plenty of rocks to study.
00:37While the Pathfinder lander took pictures of the Martian sky and collected meteorological data,
00:41the Sojourner rover studied Martian rocks and soil with its three cameras
00:45and an alpha proton X-ray spectrometer,
00:48which allowed it to analyze the chemical composition of samples from the surface.
00:52And that's what happened on this day in space.
00:55NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology