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Mars Pathfinder  A duplicate of the Mars Pathfinder Sojourner rover undergoing tests at Kennedy Space Center. The Sojourner vehicle went on to make a highly successful reconnaissance of the Ares Valles landing site on Mars in 1997. | NASA spacecraft launched on 4 December 1996, landing on the planet Mars on 4 July 1997. It carried a small six-wheeled roving vehicle called Sojourner to examine rock and soil samples around the landing site. Mars Pathfinder was the first to use air bags instead of retrorockets to cushion the landing. |
| Pathfinder sent its last data transmission on 27 September 1997. It sent over 23 million bits of information back to Earth, including over 16,500 images from the landing site, 15 chemical analyses of the surrounding soil, and previously unknown data on the Martian wind and weather. |
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