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On July 4th 1997 NASA's
Mars Pathfinder landed on the surface of Mars, on board was the Sojourner
Rover. The rover was design to demonstrate the future of using robots
for planet exploration, it accomplished this and so much more. The rover
retrieved more than 550 images and 15 chemical analyses of soil and martian
rocks as well as extensive data about the planets weather system. The
Pathfinder lander also returned a magnificent 16,500+ pictures.
Rover
Characteristics
|
|
| Total
Mass |
16
kg
|
| Mobile
Mass |
11.5
kg including APXS deployment mechanism and APXS Instrument |
Lander-Mounted
Rover Equipment Mass:
|
4.5
kg including ultra-high frequency (UHF) modem and support structure.
|
| Autonomous
Navigation |
On
board, using laser striping for obstacle detection |
| Mobility
System |
Six-wheel,
rocker bogie suspension |
| Command
And Telemetry |
UHF
link with lander |
| Payload |
Aft
and fore cameras, APXS, APXS deployment mechanism |
| Power |
0.25-M2
Solar panels, peak power 16 W-hours: primary battery, 50 W-hours
|
| Thermal
Control |
Three
radioisotope header units (RHUs) |
| Computer
Characteristics |
80C85,
0.1 MIPS; 0.5 Mbyte RAM mass storage; 0.5 kg, 1.5 W |
| Surface
Ops Time |
10
A.M. to 2 P.M. each martian day (sol) |
Above information
taken from http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/mpf/fact_sheet.html
To find out more about
NASA's next Rover Mission to Mars visit http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/future/2003.html
To find out about
all of NASA's robotic projects visit this links page http://prime.jsc.nasa.gov/ROV/nlinks.html
Images of pathfinder can be found at the following link
http://powerweb.grc.nasa.gov/DOC/pathfinder/images.html
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