https://phys.org/news/2022-07-nasa-year ... -mars.html
by Jet Propulsion Laboratory
When a daring team of engineers put a lander and the first rover on the Red Planet a quarter century ago, they changed how the world explores.
On a July evening in 1997, Jennifer Trosper drove home from work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory holding a picture of the Martian surface to her steering wheel. Earlier that day, the agency's Pathfinder mission had landed on Mars encased in protective air bags and taken the image of the red, rubbly landscape that transfixed her.
"As I was on the freeway, I had that image on my steering wheel and kept looking at it," Trosper said, reminiscing. "I probably should have been looking more closely at the road."
NASA’s Sojourner Mars rover is seen on the 22nd Martian day, or sol, of the Pathfinder mission near a location nicknamed “The Dice” (three small rocks behind the rover) and a rock nicknamed “Yogi.” Credit: NASA/JPL
Given that Trosper was the mission's flight director, her excitement was understandable. Not only had Pathfinder landed on Mars, a feat all its own, but it had done so at a fraction of the cost and time required of previous Mars missions. And, the next day, the team was set to change the course of Mars exploration forever: They had sent instructions to Pathfinder to extend a ramp so that history's first Mars rover, Sojourner, could roll down onto the planet's surface.