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Approximately 20 years after Viking, the Pathfinder spacecraft and rover ‘dropped in’ out of the Martian night sky. Another first-of-a-kind mission, Pathfinder employed innovative thinking, from its method of landing, through the ingenious little surface rover, “Sojourner Truth,” which affectionately become known among the Pathfinder team members as, “Our little geologist on Mars [H. Moore].” Pathfinder landed near the Martian equator in an out-wash region rich in geology, both local and not-so-local due to hydrological transport of material in a cataclysmic flood ages ago. Pathfinder returned a wealth of geological data, meteorological data, magnetic data, dust wear and atmospheric dust settling data, over 16,000 photographs, and the first real evidence of electrostatic charging phenomena associated with dry, cold surface dust. Many of the results obtained from the Pathfinder are being used to plan future robotic missions to Mars in preparation for an eventual human landing.
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