Mars Pathfinder mission

Golombek, M.P., et al. Overview of the Mars Pathfinder Mission and Assessment of Landing Site Predictions. Science 278, No. 5344 (December 5,1997) 1743-1748. 

Jenkins, Dennis R. Space Shuttle The History of the National Space Transportation System—The First One Hundred Missions. 3d ed. Dennis R. Jenkins, 2001. A history of the space shuttle from a spacecraft-design perspective. Detailed schematic diagrams and voluminous photos of construction, maintenance, and operation of the shuttle reveal much about the art of manned spacecraft engineering. Mishkin, Andrew. Sojourner An Insider s View of the Mars Pathfinder Mission. New York Berkeley Books, 2003. The author is a senior systems engineer for NASA. His book is a personal glimpse of spacecraft engineering and operations. 

Mishkin, Andrew. Sojourner An Insider s View of the Mars Pathfinder Mission. New York Berkeley Books, 2003. 

RBS can provide absolute quantitative analysis of elemental composition with an accuracy of about 5%. It can provide depth-profile information from surface layers and thin films to a thickness of about 1 pm. In some cases, however, the high-energy beam can damage the surface. This is particularly a problem with insulating materials, such as polymers, alkali halides, and oxides. The Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997 contained an alpha proton X-ray spectrometer (APXS). In its RBS mode, the spectrometer bombarded samples with alpha particles and determined elemental composition via energy analysis of the backscattered particles. In addition to RBS, the APXS instrument was designed to carry out proton emission and particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) experiments. Soil and rock compositions were measured and compared to those from the earlier Viking mission. 

Golombek, M. P. (1998). The Mars Pathfinder Mission. Scientific American, 279,40-9. 

In the last half of the 1990s, NASA sent several probes to Mars that were unlike anything seen before. The Mars Pathfiirder mission landed on the red planet on July 4, 1997, on the rocky flood plain Ares Vallis. After landing the Pathfinder craft unfurled and a 23-pound, six-wheeled remote roving vehicle, named Sojourner, crawled off the platform and onto the planet s surface, while Pathfinder itself raised a camera arm to a height of five feet. 

The Mars Pathfinder probe landed on Mars on July 4,1997. Pathfinder was second in the Discovery series of robotic spacecraft, which the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) began to develop in the mid 1990s. Costing an average of 150 million per project, the Discovery shift to faster, cheaper, less-ambitious probes was prompted by the catastrophic failure in 1993 of the 1-billion Mars Observer mission. Pathfinder was the third spacecraft ever to land successfully on Mars NASA s Viking I and Viking II spacecraft... 

Backshell—Upper shell of the Mars Pathfinder entry vehicle, enclosing the lander/rover vehicle along with the heat shield during the cruise and entry phases of the mission. Entry braking rockets are also mounted to the backshell. 

More complete and better data about the chemical composition of the Martian surface were obtained from the Mars Pathfinder s Soujourner Rover, which landed on the planet s surface on July 4, 1997. The chart on pages 119-121 contains data on three soil samples gathered from Mars on this mission (A-2, A-4, and A-5), as well as two Martian rocks, nicknamed "Barnacle Bill" (A-3) and... 

As discussed in Section 12Ci-3, the Al XS. or alpha proton X-ray spectrometer, has been an important experiment aboard all of the Mars exploration rovers. Journal articles provide details of the APXS experiments on the most recent missions in 2004 and compare the instrumentation and measurement strategies with those on board the Pathfinder mission of 1997.- ... 

Abstract NASA has used aerogel in several space exploration missions over the last two decades. Aerogel has been used as a hypervelocity particle capture medium (Stardust) and as thermal insulation for the Mars Pathfinder, Mars Exploration Rovers, and Mars Science Lander. Future applications of aerogel are also discussed and include the proposed use of aerogel as a sample collection medium to return upper atmosphere particles from Mars to earth and as thermal insulation in thermal-to-electric generators for future space missions and terrestrial waste-heat recovery technology. 

Later successful U.S. landers included the Mars Pathfinder lander/rover mission (which utilized air bags rather than retro-rockets during the last phase of its landing) and the Phoenix, which studied the geologic history of water on Mars, its involvement in Martian climate change, and the planet s past or future habitability. 

Rover. Although Russian Mars 2 and Mars 3 descent modules brought rovers with them as early as 1971, no rover was successfully deployed on Mars until the U.S. Pathfinder mission of 1997 deployed its Sojourner rover. Able to travel about a half kilometer, or one-third of a mile from the lander, the Sojourner rover returned 550 photographs to Earth and the data from chemical analyses of sixteen locations on the Martian surface. 

Nomex was and still is widely used in the U.S. space programs, for instance, in the form of airbags for the Mars-Pathfinder and Mars-Exploration-Rover missions. 

Pathfinder broadened our understanding of Mars and paved the way for future exploration by showing that the new, inexpensive exploration technologies can work. However, no lander has managed to land successfully on Mars since Pathfinder. The U.S. mission Mars Polar Lander erashed near the Martian south pole in 2000, prompting widespread questioning of the claim—seemingly proved by Pathfinder s spectacular success— that Mars missions could be built faster, cheaper, and better. 

The next scheduled lander mission to Mars, Mars Exploration Rover, is due to attempt touchdown in January, 2004. Twin Mars Exploration Rovers will land at separate locations using the Pathfinder-tested airbag... 

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