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| Mars Pathfinder
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The Mars Pathfinder Mission is a NASA program for planetary missions. The spacecraft took 3 years to complete and an amazing low cost of $150M, which is 1/15 of the previous Viking. It is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
It was launched on December 10, 1996 and has a flawless eight-month flight to reach Mars on July 4, 1997. Pathfinder landed lightly on the downstream of the great catastrophic outflow channel of Ares Vallis. It then landed a single mobile vehicle called Sojourner and several instruments on the surface of Mars. Sojourner's mobility provides the capability of investigating the Martian ground, a landing area over hundreds of square meters on Mars. Pathfinder also investigated the surface of Mars with three special science instruments, namely IMP, Alpha Proton X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) and an Atmospheric Structure Instrument/Meteorology package (ASI / MET). These instruments enabled Pathfinder in investigating the geological properties of the soil and the atmospheric conditions of Martianšs thin atmosphere.
Pathfinder sent back valuable photos taken on the red planet and data collected from the soil and atmosphere. However, sad to say, Pathfinder now is no longer in operation due to the depletion of battery in the spacecraft. Scientist on earth had failed to get in contact with it.
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