Mars Pathfinder
Mars Pathfinder; was (MPF English for Martian pioneers ) an American Mars Lander, which was set up in 1996 by NASA. He brought the first successful Mars rovers on the Martian surface.
Mars Pathfinder consisted of a lander with cameras and measurement instruments and a only 10.6 kg robotic vehicle ( rover) named Sojourner. The rover was named after Sojourner Truth, an American freedom fighter, woman 's rights activist and wandering preacher, whose name means " guest" means. The rover could press one mounted on its back alpha particle X-ray spectrometer on the rocks or the soil and chemically analyzed.
The probe was launched on 4 December 1996 aboard a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. She landed on 4 July 1997 in an area called " Ares Vallis ", which is located in the northern hemisphere and is one of the most rocky areas on Mars. The place was chosen by the researchers because a landing there was relatively safe and there a variety of different rocks were deposited.
The freedom of movement of Sojourner made it possible to analyze much more rock and soil samples, as it would have been a traditional probe possible. The hardness of the surface of Mars could be determined with the Wheel Abrasion Experiment, in which the abrasion of the wheels was measured. Until the last transmission on September 27, 1997 Mars Pathfinder sent 16,500 from the lander and 550 images taken by the rover as well as more than 15 chemical analyzes of soil and rocks back to Earth, as well as detailed weather information. The most likely cause of the failure of the probe is assumed that the batteries are frozen at the cold night temperatures on the surface of Mars. After the successful landing of the lander of the Mars Pathfinder mission was renamed in honor of the famous American astronomer and planetary scientists Carl Sagan Carl Sagan Memorial Station in. The latest research results and pictures were first published immediately in the then fledgling World Wide Web.
Despite the great success of the mission it was originally "just" intended as a technology demonstration mission. Thus, the Sojourner should prove, for example, the first car on the Red Planet. Further developments of the mission are the similarly designed, but much larger exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity at NASA who successfully landed in January 2004 on the Martian surface.