It was Independence Day 25 years ago when a small rover bearing the name of a Civil War abolitionist parachuted and fell to the surface of the Red Planet with air cushions.
NASA’s first Mars rover, named Sojourner, landed on Chryse Planitia on July 4, 1997, aboard its landing craft, Pathfinder. The pair of spacecraft heralded a revolution in Mars exploration technology that NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers continue to this day, a quarter of a century later.
The name of the Pathfinder rover was selected (opens in a new tab) from a national contest won by 12-year-old Valerie Ambroise, whose winning essay spoke of the importance of Sojourner Truth, also known as Isabella Van Wagener. (Now, the winner of the trial appears to be a real estate agent in Connecticut.)
Related: 1 year later, the Ingenuity helicopter is still going strong on Mars
The eponymous rover Sojourner spent nearly four months, 12 times its design life, working on Mars: nesting in rocks, analyzing its chemistry and transmitting its observations to Earth.
The results, broadcast in real time on the first Internet networks, showed a red planet potentially habitable for life: “The resulting scientific findings suggested that Mars was at a time in its warm, humid past, with existing water. in a liquid and thicker state. atmosphere, “said NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, which managed the mission’s rover (opens in a new tab).
A comparison of three generations of Mars rovers developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In front and in the center is the flight spare of Mars’ first rover, Sojourner, which landed on Mars in 1997 as part of the Mars Pathfinder project. On the left is a test rover from the Mars Exploration Rover Project which is a working brother of Spirit and Opportunity, both of which landed on Mars in 2004. On the right is a test rover from the Mars Science Laboratory in the size of the Mars rover for this project, Curiosity, which landed on Mars in August 2012. (Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech)
Today Sojourner serves as a major solar-powered ancestor for NASA’s much larger, nuclear-powered rovers: Curiosity (about to reach its 10th anniversary from Earth to Mars) and Perseverance (which landed the February 18, 2021 accompanied by the first). -Helicopter marching always, Ingenuity.)
These rovers are part of a network of landers, orbiters and other vehicles that explore the Red Planet to give meaning to its complex history. Why the Martian atmosphere thinned, how much water ran on the surface and whether there were habitable conditions are issues that still concern scientists today.
Twenty-five years ago today he landed a true pioneer. Sojourner proved that we could drive to Mars; every rover has since made a real land exploration. I am the fifth in this line, collecting samples that could one day return to Earth and rewrite history. Come in. pic.twitter.com/ikLdrPOc7c4 July 2022
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The mission also served as a reference point to engage the public. Current rover teams use tweets, TikTok and live events to announce new finds on Mars.
The much earlier 1997 Internet saw frequent uploads of images to the Pathfinder website, which still has its pre-millennial design. At first, NASA thought it would get 25 million downloads after landing; quickly updated this estimate to three, the agency recalled (opens in a new tab) in 2017. The traffic load forced other agency servers to intervene to prevent site blockages at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory from NASA, but everything worked.
Pathfinder was so popular in the memory of the public that it represented a crucial turning point in “The Martian” of 2015, a Hollywood film (promoted by NASA and based on a novel by Andy Weir) about an astronaut who headed alone to the Red Planet after being stranded.
The mission made its final transmission on September 27, 1997, leaving both Pathfinder and Sojourner silent on the surface, but their data will essentially persist forever. NASA still retains 16,500 images of Pathfinder and 550 images of Sojourner that current scientists can analyze to get new ideas about the history of the red planet.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace (opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) or Facebook.