Mars Pathfinder

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

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periments designed to evaluate its performance for use in the design of future rovers. These included: a series validating the technologies for the autonomous mobile vehicle; deploying the Alpha Proton X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) on rocks and soil; and imaging the lander for an engineering assessment after landing (Introduction, 1998). There were also a number of technological studies to be completed which would evaluate the Sojourner's performance. Again, the results would be used in the design of future rovers both affecting hardware and software as well as requirements for those rovers specifically designed for Mars. These included: -Mars Terrain Geometry Reconstruction from Imagery: A map of the landing site was to be created from images taken by both the rover and the lander. This would be used for future Mars missions. -Basic Soil Mechanics: Topsoil compactness and density would be studied through wheel movements. -Dead Reckoning Sensor Performance and Path Reconstruction: The path of the rover could be determined and recorded. -Sinkage in Each Martian Type Soil: Wheel movements again would be used, in this instance creating ruts or trenches through rotation and then imaging them. -Logging and Trending of Vehicle Perform
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Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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