This July, after an eight-month voyage, the United States spacecraft Mars Pathfinder is scheduled to land on Mars. It carries a mysterious passenger, a US $25 million robot called Sojourner—a small, six-wheeled rover powered by the sun. If they land intact, Pathfinder and Sojourner will study the planet’s atmosphere, rocks, and soil.

“Mars is the most like earth of any planet in the solar system,” says Donna Shirley, manager of the Mars Exploration program at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). “Mars is the only [other] planet that people would be able to live on in the next 100 years, so we need to understand it to be able to send people safely.”

To learn more, in September, another spacecraft is scheduled to enter Mars orbit. The Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) will attempt to create planetwide maps of Martian features and monitor the weather.

Following Pathfinder and MGS, NASA intends to send spacecraft to the planet every 26 months through the year 2005. We may see a future rover retrieve samples of Martian dirt and rocks to send back to earth for study.

Rock on, rover!

Also visit these Web sites:

www.jpl.nasa.gov/mars

This site features everything you need to know about the Mars Exploration Project, including mission objectives, the MGS, and the latest images from Mars.

pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets

Here you will find outstanding photographs from across the solar system, general information about each planet, and details about past NASA missions.