NASA marks 25 years since Pathfinder landed on Mars
This eight-image mosaic was acquired by Pathfinder July 5, 1997, the second Mars day, or sol, of the mission. The newly deployed Sojourner rover—the first of its kind on the Red Planet—sit on the surface of Mars after descending the Pathfinder path. Credit: NASA/JPL When a daring team of engineers placed the first landers and rovers on the Red Planet a quarter of a century ago, they changed the way the world roamed. One night in July 1997, Jennifer Trosper came home from work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory holding an image of the Martian surface at her wheel. Earlier in the day, the agency’s Pathfinder mission had landed on Mars encased in a protective air bag and took pictures of the red landscape and debris that left him transfixed. “When I was on the freeway, I had that picture on my steering wheel and kept looking at it,” Trosper recalls. “I probably should have taken a closer look at the road.” NASA’s Soj