Jet Propulsion Laboratory (U.S.). Mars Pathfinder Project Office.

This collection contains records of the Mars Pathfinder mission, including precursor missions known as Mars Environmental Survey (MESUR), MESUR Network, and Mars Rover Sample Return.

Mars Pathfinder was originally designed as a technology demonstration of a way to deliver an instrumented lander and a free-ranging robotic rover to the surface of the red planet. It was intended as a precursor to a network of landers called MESUR. Because Pathfinder was the first mission, it fell into what was then considered a "Discovery" mission class - costing less than $150 million in 1992 dollars. The MESUR Network missions were never funded, but the Pathfinder project continued. Pathfinder not only accomplished its goal but returned an unprecedented amount of data.

Mars Pathfinder used an innovative method of directly entering the Martian atmosphere, assisted by a parachute to slow its descent through the thin Martian atmosphere and a system of giant airbags to cushion the impact. The landing site, an ancient flood plain in Mars' northern hemisphere known as Ares Vallis, is among the rockiest parts of Mars. It was chosen because scientists believed it to be a relatively safe surface to land on and one which contained a wide variety of rocks deposited during a catastrophic flood.

The lander, formally named the Carl Sagan Memorial Station following its successful touchdown, and the rover, named Sojourner after American civil rights crusader Sojourner Truth, both outlived their design lives.

From landing until the final data transmission on September 27, 1997, Mars Pathfinder returned 2.3 billion bits of information, including more than 16,500 images from the lander and 550 images from the rover, as well as more than 15 chemical analyses of rocks and soil and extensive data on winds and other weather factors. Findings from the investigations carried out by scientific instruments on both the lander and the rover suggest that Mars was at one time in its past warm and wet, with water existing in its liquid state and a thicker atmosphere.

Sources: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/past/pathfinder.html and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/fact_sheets/mpf.pdf.