Mars Pathfinder

Mars Pathfinder in the assembly hall

Launch of Mars Pathfinder with a Delta II rocket

Models of the previous Mars rovers in size comparison: Spirit (left), Sojourner (middle) and Curiosity (right)

Mars Pathfinder ( MPF ; English for Mars pioneers ) was an American Mars - Lander , which in 1996 by NASA was used. He brought the first successful Mars rover Sojourner to the surface of Mars.

construction

Mars Pathfinder consisted of a landing unit with cameras and measuring instruments and a robotic vehicle ( rover ) called Sojourner weighing just 10.6 kg . The rover was named after Sojourner Truth , a US freedom fighter, women's rights activist and traveling preacher whose name means "guest". The rover could press an alpha-particle X-ray spectrometer attached to its back onto the rocks or the ground and carry out chemical analyzes.

Mission history

The probe was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on December 4, 1996 aboard a Delta II missile . It landed on July 4, 1997 in an area called " Ares Vallis, " which is in the northern hemisphere and is one of the rockiest areas on Mars. The location was chosen by the scientists because it was relatively safe to land there and a large number of different rocks were deposited there.

Sojourner examines the “Yogi” baptized rock

The freedom of movement of the Sojourner allowed it to analyze many more rock and soil samples than would have been possible with a traditional probe. The hardness of the Martian surface could be determined with the Wheel Abrasion Experiment , in which the abrasion of the wheels was measured. As of its last broadcast on September 27, 1997, Mars Pathfinder had returned 16,500 images captured by the lander and 550 images captured by the rover, as well as more than 15 chemical analyzes of soil and rock, as well as detailed weather data. The most likely cause for the failure of the probe is believed to be that the batteries frozen in at the low night temperatures on the surface of Mars.

Trivia

After the successful landing, the lander of Mars Pathfinder mission in honor of the famous American astronomer and planetary scientists was Carl Sagan in Carl Sagan Memorial Station renamed.
The latest research results and images were published immediately for the first time on the then still young World Wide Web .
Despite the great success of the mission, it was originally intended “only” as a technology demonstration mission. For example, the Sojourner should prove itself as the first vehicle on the Red Planet. Further developments of the mission are the similarly designed but much larger exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity of NASA, which successfully landed on the surface of Mars in January 2004.

fiction

In the episode Terra Prime of the Star Trek television series Star Trek: Enterprise , the Mars Pathfinder rover Sojourner has a guest appearance in its role as the Carl Sagan memorial . One learns that this was supplemented with the colonization of Mars by a memorial stone. The image of Sojourner examining the Yogi rock can also be seen in the opening credits of Star Trek: Enterprise .

In the film Red Planet , the crew stranded on Mars uses the Sojourner's communication module to re-establish the radio link to the orbiting spacecraft.

In Andy Weir's novel The Martian , the protagonist Mark Watney undertakes a multi-week expedition to the Pathfinder landing site. He takes the Pathfinder and Sojourner with him and can repair the landing unit and thus establish a connection to Earth. In the film adaptation, you can see Sojourner driving around Watney's habitat.