Who would have ever dreamed about a spacecraft, sponsored by The United States, landing on the surface of Mars for a second time? That dream became a reality on July 4, 1997. This date marked a famous leap for NASA. The Pathfinder sent back astonishing facts and countless pictures and analyses. In short, the Mars Pathfinder Mission was a surprisingly successful mission bringing a great recognition to The United States from around the world.
At first, many people doubted that the Pathfinder mission would become a success. Most believed that the Pathfinder would never even land on the surface of "the red planet". Little did they know, that sixth months from its initial takeoff on December 04, 1996, it would land very precisely where it had been projected and planned to do so. Using solar panels as its power, it impacted the surface of mars, without going into the orbit around the planet, at a velocity of 40 mph and bounced fifty feet into the air, bouncing another fifteen times and rolling before coming to a complete rest. The landing site is the Ares Vallis region is at 19.33 N, 33.55 W and it was named the Sagan Memorial Station. Engineering constraints were identified; surface environments and safety considerations played a major part in the selection of this site. The Pathfinder brought back substantial information within a time frame of one month of being on the surface of Mars. .
On the surface of Mars for a month, the mission returned about 1.2 gigabits of data which included 9669 Lander, 384 Rover images and about 4 million temperature, pressure, and wind measurements, performed ten chemical analyses of rocks and soil and explored over 100 square meters of the Martian surface. Several conclusions were made during the Pathfinder's mission that the Viking 1 (a previous mission spacecraft) could not determine. Evidence of wind abrasion of rocks and dune shaped deposits was found, which indicated the presence of sand.
