NASA celebrated the 25th anniversary of the landing of the Pathfinder mission on Mars. The first ever rover to explore Mars, called Sojourner, was included in this mission.
The base station and rover were landed in the Ares Vallis region of Mars. The mission collected some of the earliest data on the atmosphere and climate, as well as the composition of rocks and soil in the region.
The rover was small compared to the car-sized rovers that are currently exploring Mars. It was 25 pounds and no bigger than a microwave oven. It showed that rovers could be used to explore other planets.
A generation of Mars scientists and engineers were inspired by the rovers explorations. I had always been interested in space and thought this could be my career.
NASA set up a website dedicated to the mission which became popular with early web users. The public engagement value of sharing data from space missions continues today with programs like the public archives sharing all of the raw images taken by cameras on the Perseverance rover
Doug Ellison said that putting so much online so quickly was a paradigm shift. Today, we want to share as much as we can from our rover missions. The Mars program owes a debt of gratitude to Pathfinder.
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