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Mars Pathfinder

Mars Pathfinder - Generating Useful Data and Goodwill

The Mars Pathfinder Mission was an extremely successful venture, which has boosted the NASA Discovery Program and planet exploration in general. The data collected delivered some interesting surprises, but has contributed to our knowledge about the planet Mars and created basis for further study.

The Mars Pathfinder mission was the second launch in the NASA Discovery Program. Missions falling under this umbrella are of short duration, three years or less, and relatively low cost at 150 million dollars. The specific mission of the Mars Pathfinder was primarily to provide an engineering demonstration of the key technologies and concepts which will eventually be used in future missions. The mission was to demonstrate a low-cost cruise stage as well as the Entry, Descent, and Landing systems, which are required for placing a payload safely on the surface of the planet Mars, and to demonstrate the mobility and usefulness of a microrover on the same surface (Introduction, 1998).

In addition to the primary objective, the mission also had a number of scientific assignments which included investigations of the following: geology and surface morphology at sub-meter to a hundred meters scale; the geochemistry and petrology of soils and rocks; the magnetic and mechanical properties of the Mars soil as well as the magnetic properties of its dust; a variety of atmospheric studies; and the rotational and orbital dynamics of Mars (Science objectives, 1998). The available equipment will also provide the opportunity to identify a diverse amount of crustal materials.

Studies of the geology and surface morphology hope to provide us with a basic understanding of the surface and near-surface soil properties and a sense of the topography. Examination of the petrology and geochemistry of surface materials will possibly allow scientists to determine the early differentiation and evoluti...

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Mars Pathfinder. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 05:02, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1691316.html