The last decade of the 20th century saw more mission failures than successes. Major among them were Mars 96 by Roscosmos (the space agency of the then-newly-constituted Russia) and Nozomi by Japan’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, or JAXA.
But the decade was saved by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor or MGS (1996) and Mars Pathfinder (1996)! The MGS reached Mars in 1997, and by the time its mission ended in 2006, this orbiter had long achieved its primary goal of mapping Mars. It imaged potential landing sites for future missions.
The lander-rover mission, Mars Pathfinder, was a great achievement for two more reasons. Executed within three years, with a total cost of only 265 million dollars, the project was a success for NASA’s Discovery Program, which aimed to make space missions “cheaper, faster and better.” Additionally, on July 5 1997, Pathfinder’s rover, Sojourner, became the first to operate on a planet other than the Earth!
Picture Credit : Google
