NASA marks 25 years since Pathfinder touched down on Mars NASAJPL
On a July evening in 1997, Jennifer Trosper drove home from work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory holding a picture of the Martian surface to her steering wheel. Earlier that day, the agency's Pathfinder mission had landed on Mars encased in protective air bags and taken the image of the red, rubbly"As I was on the freeway, I had that image on my steering wheel and kept looking at it," Trosper said, reminiscing.
NASA’s Sojourner Mars rover captured this image of the Pathfinder lander with airbags, now deflated, that were used to cushion the spacecraft during touchdown. The letters “JPL” and an American flag can be seen on the lander’s electronics box below the lander’s camera, which is mounted on a mast. Credit: NASA/JPL
With every new mission and every new way of exploring Mars, humanity gains a better understanding of how the Red Planet once resembled Earth, covered by rivers and lakes and featuring the chemistry needed to support life. "That moment—seeing this little mechanical rover exploring the surface of another planet—made me realize that's something I would love to do," said Samuels, now Perseverance's mission manager."I had always been interested in space, but that was the spark where I thought this could actually be my profession."
With the business' employees huddled behind him, Ellison saved Pathfinder's Martian landscapes onto a 3 1/2-inch floppy disk and printed them out on a black-and-white dot matrix printer to create a vista of the Red Planet he could look at from home.NASA’s Sojourner Mars rover captured this panorama on the Red Planet about a week before its final data transmission, which occurred Sept. 27, 1997.
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