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.

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