Better

MARSFa
PATHFINDER:
BETTER SCIENCE?

met administrator Daniel Goldins

Chea
Part of NASAs new Discovery series of
low-cost spacecraft, Mars Pathfinder

challenge that solar-system exploration

be done faster and cheaper. But
was it also better?

Above: The prime science instrument on the Pathfinder lander was its
stereoscopic camera, the Imager for Mars Pathfinder (IMP), with 12 color
filters for each of its two eyes.This mosaic shows the Twin Peaks, hills 30
or 35 meters (100 feet) tall, about a kilometer to the west. The foreground
includes rocky ridges and swales of flood debris. Courtesy JPL/Caltech.

1998 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

 By Jim Bell

ster
ASAs Mars Pathfinder

N spacecraft blazed down

through the Martian night
sky on the Fourth of July last
year, bounced in its bundle of air bags
more than a dozen times across the sur-

NASA/JPL
face, rolled to a halt on the slopes of an
ancient floodplain, and for nearly three
months returned thousands of pictures The rock in the foreground, nicknamed Ender, is pitted and
and other data to spellbound inhabitants marked by a subtle, nearly horizontal texture that suggests lay-
of Earth. It was a phenomenally success- ering or sedimentation. This image by Sojourner shows the
ful demonstration of new technologies lander in the near distance. The IMP camera is the cylindrical
and sheer engineering chutzpah a object on top of the deployed mast.
high-stakes gamble that traded high risk
for low cost and hit the jackpot. turned from Mars Pathfinder, and they
True to its name, this was a pathfind- are keenly interested in this question.
ing mission, demonstrating new hard- But just what does better really mean?
ware, software, operations and manage- To a scientist, better means higher-
ment strategies, and fiscal restraint all quality data (not just more data), care-
of which will be essential for NASA to fully directed to address the most im-
carry out its ambitious program of Mars portant problems in a particular field
exploration in the next decade and be- (rather than just any measurements). It
yond. The mantra at NASA to describe should provide more definitive results
the new philosophy in solar-system ex- than previous data and should turn up
ploration is better, faster, cheaper. new questions to guide future experi-
Pathfinder certainly did its job faster and ments. The Pathfinder data satisfy this
cheaper. But was it better? definition of better. The mission is
Mission scientists have had nearly a viewed by most scientists involved as far

per
year to analyze and interpret the data re- more than the test flight it was partly
conceived to be and as a major scientific
Below: The Sojourner rover carried its own small cameras to examine success in its own right.
rocks close up. The rocks Stimpy (facing page) and Half Dome (right) The measurements performed by
show pitted textures that may suggest a volcanic origin. The scallops Pathfinder fall into five categories: geolo-
on Moe (center) and near the top of Stimpy are probably flutes gy, mineralogy/geochemistry, surface-
etched by windblown sand. Stimpy and Moe are 25 centimeters (10 material properties, atmospheric science,
inches) tall; Half Dome stands 50 cm (20 inches) above the soil.
NASA/JPL

1998 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Sky & Telescope July 1998 37
 Geology
Pathfinders landing site was chosen be-
cause, from orbital images and other data
taken by the Viking missions more than
20 years ago, it appeared to be a relatively
safe, flat area in the middle of a plain cre-
ated by a massive flood much earlier in
Martian history. The date of the flood was
unknown, though it is believed to have
happened more than 2 billion years ago
(based on the density of later impact
craters). Nor was its duration or volume
known, or even whether multiple floods
occurred over long periods of geologic
time. Mission planners hoped that the
flood(s) would have delivered a variety of
rock and soil samples to this site from
many different types of geologic units,
and that by studying this grab bag the
mission could address many science ques-
tions by going to just one place.
The most visually spectacular results
TIMOTHY J. PARKER (JPL / CALTECH)

were the panoramic landscape views re-

turned by the Imager for Mars Pathfind-
er camera (IMP). The pictures showed
that the lander came to rest in a rocky,
undulating desert of semirounded boul-
ders and pebbles, some of which appear
to be stacked in preferential directions as
A super-resolution image of the rock Yogi, created by combining many nearly identical pictures if piled up by rushing waters. Also hint-
to sharpen the view. The shadowed area was processed separately. Despite such image enhance- ing at water acting both to deposit and
ments, the origin of the pitted textures and subtle linear markings on this and many other rocks is scour material were the distant, perhaps
still undetermined. Yogi is about 1.3 meters (4 feet) wide and 4.8 meters (16 feet) from the lander. terraced hills, the knobs resembling
streamlined islands, and the rolling land-
and planetary rotational dynamics. identifying resources for future explo- scape of ridges and troughs. Many of
Three workhorse instruments provided ration missions. Pathfinder obtained these features are similar to formerly
most of the data in each of these areas new and unique information in each of flooded plains on Earth. The evidence is
aided by the Sojourner Rover, which these areas. Much attention has been strong but not unequivocal, however.
crept down from the lander and roamed given to the results dealing with water, Other processes involving wind, volcan-
the immediate surroundings. the common element in all three parts ism, or impact could be responsible for
The instruments were designed to ad- of NASAs Mars strategy. many of the observed landforms.
dress NASAs three overarching themes
in Mars exploration: searching for signs A super-resolution close-up of South Peak. This image was constructed from 42 red frames,
of past or present life, determining with single blue and green frames added for color rendition. Note the apparent layering of
Marss past and present climate, and the hillside, possibly suggesting water-carved terraces.

ROBERT KANEFSKY (NASA /AMES)

38 July 1998 Sky & Telescope 1998 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
upper magnet
lower magnet Sol 10 Sol 38 Sol 66

NASA / JPL
In one experiment, Mars Pathfinder carried small magnets behind white panels exposed to the air. Over many Martian days (sols), highly mag-
netic dust settled out of the atmosphere to create ever darker bulls-eye patterns over the magnets. The dusts color (measured against the
color-calibration squares at bottom) and its degree of magnetism give clues to its mineralogy.

Faster
Another major geologic finding was
that wind has been an extremely impor-
tant, and perhaps dominant, geologic
process on this part of Mars. Dunes, rip-
Wind may have been the only major agent
ples, moats, wind tails, and the centime-
ter-size scour marks (flutes) worn into
of change at the landing site for a huge span
many rocks attest to windblown sand and
dust shaping the landing site. The Mar-
of time, conceivably several billion years.
tian atmosphere is very thin, having only
0.6 to 0.7 percent of the sea-level pressure
on Earth. So the evidence for much wind
erosion suggests that it has been the only nothing has happened since! carved features almost everywhere we
major agent of change at the landing site Evidence for wind as the major force look on the Martian surface, now that
for a huge span of time, conceivably sev- shaping the Martian surface today is also we can see unprecedented detail at scales
eral billion years. Or perhaps conditions apparent in the latest Mars Global Sur- of only a few meters resolution.
were quite different in the past, and the veyor (MGS) high-resolution images Geologists offer conflicting ideas
actions of wind or water for shorter times currently being taken from Mars orbit about the origin of the rocks around the
and under more Earth-like conditions (January issue, page 32). They show landing site. Many believe that most or
created the observed features and sand dunes and other possibly wind- all of the rocks are volcanic, based on
their shapes and textures. Some rocks
appear redder and more rounded than
IMPs Landscape Panoramas others; these may be the oldest. Others
Number of Color
are darker and more angular; these may
Observation Color Images Coverage Compression Observation Time have been tossed onto the landing site in
a b more recent ages from an impact crater
First-Look Panorama 145 R, G, B 12:1 to 80:1 Sol 1, morning
2.2 kilometers to the southeast.
Predeploy Red/IR Pan 139 R, R11c 6:1 to 12:1 Sol 1, morning
Some rocks, however, show faint evi-
Insurance Panorama 420 G, B, R8, R6 d none Sol 2, afternoon
dence of layering or bedding, suggesting
Monster Panorama 395 R, G, B, R6, R11 6:1 Sol 3, all day
a sedimentary origin. This view is sup-
Gallery Panorama 495 R, G, B 6:1 Sol 9, 10 ,11
ported by the small, rounded pebbles
Super Panorama 1,785e All f none or 2:1 Sol 13 to 83
and cobbles seen inside a few other
Notes rocks, which some scientists interpret as
a Also called Mission Success Panorama.
evidence of running water creating con-
b R, G, and B (red, green, and blue) images were taken through filters centered on 670, 530, and 440 nanometers.
c R11: through a 965-nm (near-infrared) filter. glomerates mixtures of pebbles and
d R8 and R6: 750- and 600-nm (deep red and yellow) filters. fine-grained sediments. Still other scien-
e 83 percent of the landing site was imaged in the Super Pan before the lander stopped functioning. tists believe that some of the rocks and
f Other filters used in the 12-color Super Pan included 480, 800, 860, 900, 930, and 1000 nm (blue through infrared).
their surface features may originate from
For observations made before sol 3, the camera was in its predeployment position nearer the ground. exotic weathering processes or even un-
derwater volcanism or weathering.

1998 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Sky & Telescope July 1998 39
 Clearly there does appear to be a grab-
bag assortment of rocks at the landing
site, as was hoped. However, it may be
quite difficult to resolve controversies
about their origin using the existing
Pathfinder data.
One of Pathfinders most tangible re-
sults is the confirmation that images and
other data taken from orbit (Viking Or-
biter data in the case of Pathfinder, and
the much better MGS data in the future)
can determine the safety and overall
characteristics of landing sites. Future
rovers and landers, and eventual human
explorers, will be more ambitious than
Pathfinder was. The ability to predict the
size and number of rocks on the surface,
the depth of dust, and the overall topog-
raphy will be critical to deciding exactly
where to touch down.

Mineralogy and Geochemistry

On Earth, information about local cli-
mate and its effect on the surface is
often preserved in the mineralogy of
rocks and soils, including their abun-
dances of various elements. The same

NASA / JPL
may be true on Mars. Pathfinder provid-
ed an opportunity to test this hypoth-
esis, using techniques that were better Wind effects on Martian soil are highlighted in this false-color image. Red and blue frames
optimized for mineralogy and geo- have been combined to enhance contrasts between several soil types. Winds have distributed
chemistry than those used by the Viking these fine materials in complex patterns around small rocks. The rock at right center is 16 cen-
landers in 1976. timeters (6.3 inches) long.
The most striking result at the
Pathfinder site was the measurement at the Pathfinder site are indeed vol- cluding silicon compounds, rising to the
(using Sojourners Alpha Proton X-Ray canic, their chemistry is much more like top. This would suggest a much more
Spectrometer, or APXS) that most of the a class of Earth volcanic rocks called an- active subsurface volcanic system than
rocks analyzed have a high silicon con- desites (named for the Andes Moun- we imagined, based on the simple
tent. The proportion of silicon was high- tains). The implication would be that, at Hawaiian volcanism model that was fa-
er than in the Martian meteorite sam- least in some places on Mars, molten vored because of the SNC meteorites.
ples we have here on Earth (the so-called lava was processed or differentiated, However, a more active, complex style
SNC meteorites), or in typical Hawaiian- with heavy elements such as iron sinking of volcanism does not necessarily imply
style volcanic basalts. In fact, if the rocks to the bottom and light materials, in- that Mars has Earth-like plate tectonics,
with continental masses floating and
A lonely sign of intelligent life on Mars. Highly processed super-resolution images of the distant drifting on a denser underlayer. There
landscape revealed a bright white object about 1.2 kilometers (0.7 mile) from the lander. It was are many regions on Earth where high-
Pathfinders discarded backshell, which separated shortly before the lander reached the ground. silicon volcanic rocks are unrelated to
plate tectonics.
Measurements of the color and mag-
netic properties of the soil and wind-
blown dust also revealed surprises. The
dust that gets redistributed around the
planet in the famous Martian dust
storms has a highly magnetic compo-
nent, as discovered by the Viking land-
ers. The Pathfinder measurements re-
fined the Viking experiment, and the
results support the conclusion that the
magnetic dust grains consist at least
NASA/JPL

partly of the iron oxide mineral

maghemite. On Earth maghemite is rare.

40 July 1998 Sky & Telescope 1998 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
It is usually formed by the freeze-drying holes, mission scientists estimated the
of iron-rich water solutions. If it origi- density of the soils to be from 1.2 to 2.0 Images by Mars Pathfinders
nated the same way on Mars, then the grams per cubic centimeter very sim- IMP Camera
fine Martian dust may have formed in a ilar to typical dry soils on Earth. Observation Number of Images
much wetter (and perhaps warmer) en- An attempt to scrape a wheel across Atmospheric (Sun and sky) 4,832
vironment than prevails today. the bright pinkish patch known as Scoo- Surface panoramas 3,774
The IMP measured the color of the by Doo indicated that this odd forma- Windsocks 1,812
soils and of the dust deposited on the tion is not just a flattened clump of soil Rover support 1,479
surfaces of numerous rocks. The material or dust but is probably a cemented crust Astronomy 1,136
has many similarities to heavily oxidized or perhaps a flat rock layer. It and simi- APXS sites, multispectral spots 992
volcanic ash deposits, as well as to some lar bright, flat patches around the land- Magnetic targets 665
other fine-grained iron-bearing minerals. ing site remain enigmatic. Many mission Super resolution 585
Both the soil of Mars and the windblown scientists think they may be similar to Radiometric calibration targets 567
dust appear to be highly rusted; most or the sulfur- and chlorine-rich duricrust Photometric spots 321
all of the iron has been oxidized. When deposits seen at the Viking landing sites. Miscellaneous (dust-devil search,
and why this occurred is a mystery. The Some think they could have been change monitoring, tests, etc. 252
rusting could be related to the freeze- formed by evaporation of salt- or min- Dark frames, dark/null strips 246
drying process mentioned above, or to eral-rich solutions. Total 16,661
the interaction of ice or water with rocks
Compiled by Peter Smith (University of Arizona) and
heated by volcanism or impacts. Or it Rotational Dynamics Matthew Golombek (JPL/Caltech).
could simply be the result of painfully Scientists had a chance to perform a
slow chemical reactions between the sur- wonderful free science experiment
face rocks and the minute amounts of during the Pathfinder mission by simply gree with time. By comparing the current
water in the current atmosphere, accu- analyzing the Doppler shift of the lan- spin information from Pathfinder with
mulating over billions of years. ders radio signals as Mars rotated and similar data from Viking 21 years earlier,
moved through space. These slight shifts researchers determined the rate of Marss
Surface Materials in the radio frequency provided ex- precession. The Martian axis describes
Sojourner performed a variety of soil- tremely accurate readings of the landers one wobble in 170,000 years, compared
mechanics experiments by driving over
and digging into soils. It also attempted

Cheap
to scratch the surfaces of rocks. The
tracks that Sojourners wheel cleats left
in the soil indicate that the uppermost The fine, highly rusted Martian dust may
surface layer is extremely fine-grained,
like flour, consisting of particles only a have formed in a much wetter (and perhaps
few microns across. This top layer was
most likely formed by the gentle settling warmer) environment than prevails today.
of atmospheric dust. Interestingly, the
dust appears to be electrostatically
charged; it adhered intermittently to the
rovers metallic wheels.
Pathfinder dug holes a few centime- velocity with respect to Earth. These to one in 26,000 years for Earths axis.
ters deep, revealing a soil composed of data allowed the landers position to be The precession rate depends in part
dust, sand and silt, clods, and millime- pinpointed to within a few meters in on the planets interior structure the
ter-size pebbles. By measuring the slopes Martian latitude and longitude. They also depth and density of the Martian crust,
of little landslides on the sides of these allowed very accurate measurements of mantle, and core. The data from Path-
the length of the Martian finder appear most consistent with Mars
day and the orientation having a relatively large metallic core,
0.4
Martian Soils Samples of the Martian poles. from 1,300 to 2,000 km in radius. This
A-2 A-5 (Drift) All planets spin, and, would amount to about 40 to 60 percent
Amounts (relative to silicon)

A-4 A-8
A-9 (Scooby Doo) like a top, this spin causes of Marss overall radius. Earths core, by
0.3
A-10 Viking a planets pole to precess comparison, represents only 19 percent
to a greater or lesser de- of our planets radius.
0.2
The APXS instrument on the Sojourner rover analyzed the soil at many spots.
Chemical elements in six samples are charted here. The odd, pink, crusty ma-
0.1 terial of the Scooby Doo formation is shown with a horizontal bar for com-
parison with the others. Also shown are average soils analyzed at the Viking
Lander sites in 1976. Much of the chemistry at the Pathfinder and Viking sites
0
Ti Al Cr Fe Mn Mg Ca K Na Cl S P is similar, suggesting that wind redistributes soil globally. But unexplained
( 0.5) differences remain, such as in chlorine and sulfur. Courtesy NASA/JPL.
Elements

1998 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Sky & Telescope July 1998 41
 NASA / JPL
Cloudy skies before a Martian dawn. These eastward views were taken about 100 minutes and 40 minutes, respectively, before sunrise on the
same morning. They show pink stratus clouds about 16 kilometers (10 miles) high moving from the northeast. The brightness of the earlier
picture has been boosted. Twilight at Carl Sagan Memorial Station was bright for up to two hours after sunset and before sunrise, indicating
that sunlight-scattering dust extends to very high altitudes.

This information, in addition to the coldest temperature ever measured on wind speed, and wind direction and how
lack of a strong Martian magnetic field, Mars, less than 100 Kelvin (173 Cel- these values varied with height near the
provides preliminary but important sius, or 280 Fahrenheit). surface. Some of these observations were
clues about the interior structure and its Working from these data, mission scien- made directly with electronic sensors and
relationship to the interiors of the other tists are studying the daily cycle of temper- some by small windsocks mounted on a
terrestrial planets. ature variations in the upper atmosphere, special meteorology mast. This data set is
including the possible formation and dis- providing the most detailed look ever at
Atmospheric Science persal of carbon-dioxide ice clouds. Other daily and seasonal climate changes on
Pathfinder performed several new and cloud information came directly from the Mars. During the mission, the thin winds
important atmospheric experiments. It IMPs spectacular images of the sky. Many were light: less than 10 meters per second
started by measuring the density from showed wispy, blue or white cirruslike (less than 22 miles per hour). Changes in
the top of the atmosphere to the bottom clouds in morning and evening twilight temperature and pressure repeated close-
during its descent and landing. From as amateur astronomers might well expect, ly day after day. These types of measure-
this the atmospheres temperature and from their decades of observing morning ments should lead to better Martian
pressure profiles were derived, at least and evening clouds on Marss east and weather models and eventually to pre-
for the predawn time of the descent. The west limbs. dictions across the entire surface, such as
temperature structure differed from that IMP also estimated the amount of expected high and low temperatures and
measured by the two Viking landers as water vapor in the Martian atmosphere. the likelihood of dust storms.
they descended during late afternoon. The amount is quite small. If the water But as on Earth, the Martian atmos-
The Pathfinder descent data included the were converted into a liquid, it would phere is complex and dynamic, and
cover the surface only 0.01 many surprises were found. For exam-
10 millimeter deep. This is consis- ple, temperatures at the landing site
Air Temperatures
0 1.0 m 0.5 m 0.25 m above ground tent with previous models de- jumped by more than 20 C after sun-
10 rived from Earth-based and rise, and in the morning the air at the
20 Viking Orbiter measurements surface was more than 10 C warmer
Degrees Celsius

30
of the water vapor. than the air only a meter off the ground.
Pathfinder functioned as a By early afternoon the atmosphere ap-
40
weather station for 83 days. It pears to settle down. Another surprise
50
returned millions of measure- was the detection of small dust devils
60 ments of temperature, pressure, weak, miniature tornadoes frequently
70
80 With mostly clear skies, the daily temperature cycle repeated very closely every
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 day. The temperatures at three heights on the meteorology mast are shown for 29
Sols (Martian days) since landing sols of the mission. Courtesy Jim Murphy, NASA/Ames.

42 July 1998 Sky & Telescope 1998 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
crossing the landing site. They passed

Better
over the lander in just a few seconds.
They may explain why there always
seems to be some dust in the Martian
atmosphere, even during long periods
Another surprise was the detection of dust
between major dust storms.
Dust, of course, is a big part of Mars
devils weak, miniature tornadoes
studies. It not only influences the heat-
ing and cooling of the atmosphere and
frequently crossing the landing site.
therefore winds and weather, but it also
affects the amount of sunlight getting
down through the atmosphere to power
missions such as Pathfinder and future megabytes of data, including more than taken by a humble robotic rover and its
Mars landers. Eventually dust will be a 17,000 images from the IMP and So- trusty lander companion, as part of hu-
major concern to human explorers, not journer cameras. Only a fraction of the manitys most ambitious long-term plan-
just for its effect on solar power but for data has yet been analyzed in detail or etary exploration program to date. Where
its gritty contamination of equipment, published in the peer-reviewed literature. this plan will lead in terms of scientific
habitats, and experiments. Also, while most of the raw data was im- discovery, human drama, or the future of
In the months prior to the landing, tele- mediately accessible to anyone using the our species is anyones guess (and thats
scopic observers participating in the Mars- Internet, the broader community outside the fun of exploration, isnt it?). But I be-
Watch project noted very low levels of of the Pathfinder science team has only lieve the scientific results obtained by
dust in the atmosphere and a high abun- recently gained access to the validated Mars Pathfinder are helping to steer this
dance of water-ice clouds. Dust activity (documented, organized, and calibrated) plan on a course straight and true, and
began to increase just before the landing, mission data set. Even more than 20 on a direct intercept with our destiny.
including a spectacular storm in Valles years after the Viking landings, new re-
Marineris imaged by the Hubble Space sults and interpretations continue to be Jim Bell, an astronomer and planetary sci-
Telescope only one week before Pathfinder presented from those missions, so analy- entist at Cornell University, is a member of
set down. During the mission both sis of and arguments over Pathfinders the Mars Pathfinder science team and is in-
Pathfinder and HST measured atmospher- data are likely to continue for some time. volved in planning the Mars 2001 Rover mis-
ic dust abundances typical of those dur- Science usually inches forward in baby sion. He thanks the dedicated and energetic
ing the Viking missions. So the ocher- steps rather than by leaps and bounds. members of the Pathfinder science and engi-
salmon sky colors were similar as well. For 83 days last year the world watched neering teams for sharing many of their pre-
The size of the dust particles was de- in wonder as quite a few baby steps were liminary science results prior to publication.
rived from images of the sky. The parti-
cles were found to be typically smoke-
size, only a few microns across, consistent Further Reading
with measurements from Viking.
The preliminary peer-reviewed results from the first 30 days of the Mars Pathfind-
er mission (the Primary Mission) were published in a special issue of Science
More to Come
magazine for December 5, 1997. More detailed and complete results will appear in
These are just a sampling of the results
special issues of the Journal of Geophysical Research in late 1998 or early 1999.
still being derived from Mars Pathfinders
scientific measurements. Many of these The Science articles and many other resources are available through NASAs
findings must still be considered prelimi- Mars Pathfinder Web site, http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/default.html.
nary. The mission returned nearly 300

Twin Peaks at sunset. The dusty Martian atmosphere, brownish orange during most of the day, sometimes turned blue near the rising or set-
ting Sun due to forward scattering of blue light by fine dust particles. The same effect occasionally causes a blue Sun or Moon on Earth.
NASA / JPL

1998 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Sky & Telescope July 1998 43