I'm Going to Mars!

Mars Landers

Plot Locations of Landers of the Surface of Mars

Spirit Rover (MER-A)

The "Spirit" rover (Mars Exploration Rover A) is one of the two rovers launched to Mars in mid-2003. The rovers arrived at Mars in January of 2004 equipped with a battery of scientific instruments and will be able to traverse 100 meters a day. The nominal plan calls for the missions to last for 90 days, until April 2004, but it is likely the mission will last beyond this time.

Opportunity Rover (MER-B)

Seven science objectives are called for: 1) search for and characterize a variety of rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activity, 2) determine the distribution and composition of minerals, rocks, and soils surrounding the landing sites, 3) determine what geologic processes have shaped the local terrain and influenced the chemistry 4) perform "ground truth" of surface observations made by Mars orbiter instruments, 5) search for iron-bearing minerals, identify and quantify relative amounts of specific mineral types tha contain water or were formed in water, 6) characterize the mineralogy and textures of rocks and soils and determine the processes that created them, and 7) search for geological clues to the environmental conditions that existed when liquid water was present and assess whether those environments were conducive to life.

Pathfinder

Mars Pathfinder impacted the surface on July 4 at 16:57 UT (12:57 PM EDT) at a velocity of about 18 m/s (40 mph) - approximately 12.5 m/s vertical and 12.5 m/s horizontal - and bounced about 15 meters (50 feet) into the air, bouncing another 15 times and rolling before coming to rest approximately 2.5 minutes after impact and about 1 km from the initial impact site. The landing site in the Ares Vallis region is at 19.33 N, 33.55 W, the lander has been named the Carl Sagan Memorial Station.

Sojourner

The Mars Pathfinder's Sojourner Rover rolled onto Mars' surface on July 6 at about 05:40 UT (1:40 AM EDT). Image received at 2:00 AM EDT July 6 shows the rover completely off the ramp, all six wheels on the martian soil.

Viking 1 & 2

The Viking project consisted of launches of two separate spacecraft to Mars, Viking 1, launched on 20 August 1975, and Viking 2, launched on 9 September 1975. Each spacecraft consisted of an orbiter and a lander. After orbiting Mars and returning images used for landing site selection, the orbiter and lander detached and the lander entered the martian atmosphere and soft-landed at the selected site. The orbiters continued imaging and other scientific operations from orbit while the landers deployed instruments on the surface. The fully fueled orbiter-lander pair had a mass of 3530 kg. After separation and landing, the lander had a mass of about 600 kg and the orbiter 900 kg. The lander was encased in a bioshield at launch to prevent contamination by terrestrial organisms.

Mars 3 (Russian)

The Mars 2 and Mars 3 missions consisted of identical spacecraft, each with a bus/orbiter module and an attached descent/lander module. The primary scientific objectives of the Mars 3 orbiter were to image the martian surface and clouds, determine the temperature on Mars, study the topography, composition and physical properties of the surface, measure properties of the atmosphere, monitor solar radiation, the solar wind and the interplanetary and martian magnetic fields, and act as a communications relay to send signals from the lander to Earth.