The Pathfinder charts the path out for Mars rovers

Martian rovers are remote-controlled motor vehicles that are designed to travel the Martian surface and help us better understand our neighbouring red planet. The first Martian rover and, in fact, the first wheeled vehicle to be used on any other planet in the solar system was NASA’s Sojourner. Part of NASA’s Mars Pathfinder mission, it helped NASA develop foundational technologies for the future and thereby started modern exploration of Mars in a way. Following its successful landing, the lander was formally named the Carl Sagan Memorial Station in honour of the science populariser Carl Sagan, who had died just a couple of weeks after Pathfinder’s launch, on December 20, 1996. In addition to the airbag landing technique, the Mars Pathfinder also taught scientists that rovers had to be sufficiently autonomous to take into account the two-way Earth-Mars communication lag of up to 42 minutes.