On July 4, 1997, NASA’s Mars Pathfinder spacecraft successfully landed on Mars’ Ares Vallis. Pathfinder sent back to Earth the first new images from Mars directly available to the public over the World Wide Web. The mission set a web-traffic record at the time with more than 200 million hits. The momentum propelled by the mission’s success has sparked two decades of continuous exploration of the red planet.
Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover were exploring Mars for two months when NASA’s Global Surveyor Orbiter arrived at Mars. That orbiter explored Mars for more than nine years, overlapping with arrivals of two later orbiters — Mars Odyssey in 2001 and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2006. Both orbiters are still active. In 2004, two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, landed on Mars. Opportunity is still active. Subsequent NASA missions have been the Phoenix lander, Curiosity rover, and MAVEN orbiter. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is developing another Mars rover for launch in 2020.
Twenty years of exploration has yielded major advances in understanding active processes on modern Mars, wet environments favorable for life on ancient Mars, and how the planet has changed. Read more...
Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover were exploring Mars for two months when NASA’s Global Surveyor Orbiter arrived at Mars. That orbiter explored Mars for more than nine years, overlapping with arrivals of two later orbiters — Mars Odyssey in 2001 and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2006. Both orbiters are still active. In 2004, two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, landed on Mars. Opportunity is still active. Subsequent NASA missions have been the Phoenix lander, Curiosity rover, and MAVEN orbiter. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is developing another Mars rover for launch in 2020.
Twenty years of exploration has yielded major advances in understanding active processes on modern Mars, wet environments favorable for life on ancient Mars, and how the planet has changed. Read more...