The first Mars rover was the size of a microwave oven
When humanity first drove a vehicle on another planet, the trailblazer weighed just 23 pounds and crept along at a stroll.
On July 4, 1997, NASA’s Mars Pathfinder bounced onto the Red Planet cushioned by airbags, then unfolded to release Sojourner, the first robotic rover ever to roam the surface of another planet.
By modern standards it was tiny: a six-wheeled machine weighing about 23 pounds, roughly the size of a microwave oven, that rolled down a ramp on its second Martian day. It never strayed far from the lander, trundling at a top speed measured in inches per minute — but that was the point.
Sojourner was a proof of concept, testing whether a mobile robot could pick its way across alien terrain and study rocks up close. It analyzed the chemistry of sixteen sites and returned hundreds of images during a mission planned for a week that stretched to nearly three months.
Its modest success laid the groundwork for the far larger rovers that followed, from Spirit and Opportunity to Curiosity and Perseverance, each tracing its lineage back to a little box on wheels parked beside a lander.
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