wonderful universe
worked only for approximately 100 seconds . The lander carried a rover . It was the first time a rover landed on Mars . The rover didn ’ t send any information back to Earth . Everything changed in 1976 !!! This is the year that the probes Viking 1 and Viking 2 landed on Mars !!! I still remember the moment when I saw the images of the surface of Mars sent by the Viking probes . I saw them in the book Cosmos written by Carl Sagan . They were the first images of the surface of another planet obtained by a probe landed on the planet . It was wonderful !!! The Viking 1 landed on July 20th , 1976 and the Viking 2 landed on September 3rd , 1976 . Each mission was also composed by an orbiter . After the success of Vikings 1 and 2 , many missions were launched for Mars . We will focus only on the missions that landed probes and rovers on the red planet . The rover Sojourner landed on Mars on July 4th , 1997 . It was sent to Mars by the NASA ’ s Pathfinder Mission . Sojourner was the first rover to operate on
COURTESY OF NASA / JPL
The first color picture taken by Viking 2 on the Martian surface shows a rocky reddish surface much like that seen by Viking 1 more than 4000 miles away . The planned location for the collection of soil for on-board analysis is seen in the lower part of the photo .
another planet . The lander Pathfinder sent great images back to Earth . The next rovers sent to Mars by NASA were the twins Spirit and Opportunity . They landed on Mars in 2004 : Spirit on January , 4th and Opportunity
Sojourner takes its Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer measurement of the Yogi Rock .
COURTESY OF NASA / JPL
15