Jacob R. Matijevic

Soil‐like deposits observed by Sojourner, the Pathfinder rover

Most of the soil-like materials at the Pathfinder landing site behave like moderately dense soils on Earth with friction angles near 34°–39° and are called cloddy deposits. Cloddy deposits appear to be poorly sorted with dust-sized to granule-sized mineral or rock grains; they may contain pebbles, small rock fragments, and clods. Thin deposits of porous, compressible drifts with friction angles near 26°–28° are also present. Drifts are fine grained. Cohesions of both types of deposits are small. There may be indurated soil-like deposits and/or coated or crusted rocks. Cloddy deposits may be fluvial sediments of the Ares-Tiu floods, but other origins, such as ejecta from nearby impact craters, should be considered. Drifts are probably dusts that settled from the Martian atmosphere. Remote-sensing signatures of the deposits inferred from rover observations are consistent with those observed from orbit and Earth.

Overview of the Mars Pathfinder Mission: Launch through landing, surface operations, data sets, and science results

Mars Pathfinder successfully landed at Ares Vallis on July 4, 1997, deployed and navigated a small rover about 100 m clockwise around the lander, and collected data from three science instruments and ten technology experiments. The mission operated for three months and returned 2.3 Gbits of data, including over 16,500 lander and 550 rover images, 16 chemical analyses of rocks and soil, and 8.5 million individual temperature, pressure and wind measurements. Path-finder is the best known location on Mars, having been clearly identified with respect to other features on the surface by correlating five prominent horizon features and two small craters in lander images with those in high-resolution orbiter images and in inertial space from two-way ranging and Doppler tracking. Tracking of the lander has fixed the spin pole of Mars, determined the precession rate since Viking 20 years ago, and indicates a polar moment of inertia, which constrains a central metallic core to be between 1300 and ∼2000 km in radius. Dark rocks appear to be high in silica and geochemically similar to anorogenic andesites; lighter rocks are richer in sulfur and lower in silica, consistent with being coated with various amounts of dust. Rover and lander images show rocks with a variety of morphologies, fabrics and textures, suggesting a variety of rock types are present. Rounded pebbles and cobbles on the surface as well as rounded bumps and pits on some rocks indicate these rocks may be conglomerates (although other explanations are also possible), which almost definitely require liquid water to form and a warmer and wetter past. Air-borne dust is composed of composite silicate particles with a small fraction of a highly magnetic mineral, interpreted to be most likely maghemite; explanations suggest iron was dissolved from crustal materials during an active hydrologic cycle with maghemite freeze dried onto silicate dust grains. Remote sensing data at a scale of a kilometer or greater and an Earth analog correctly predicted a rocky plain safe for landing and roving with a variety of rocks deposited by catstrophic floods, which are relatively dust free. The surface appears to have changed little since it formed billions of years ago, with the exception that eolian activity may have deflated the surface by ∼3–7 cm, sculpted wind tails, collected sand into dunes, and eroded ventifacts (fluted and grooved rocks). Pathfinder found a dusty lower atmosphere, early morning water ice clouds, and morning near-surface air temperatures that changed abruptly with time and height. Small scale vortices, interpreted to be dust devils, were observed repeatedly in the afternoon by the meteorology instruments and have been imaged.

Rock size-frequency distributions on Mars and implications for Mars Exploration Rover landing safety and operations

The cumulative fractional area covered by rocks versus diameter measured at the Pathfinder site was predicted by a rock distribution model that follows simple exponential functions that approach the total measured rock abundance (19%), with a steep decrease in rocks with increasing diameter. The distribution of rocks >1.5 m diameter visible in rare boulder fields also follows this steep decrease with increasing diameter. The effective thermal inertia of rock populations calculated from a simple empirical model of the effective inertia of rocks versus diameter shows that most natural rock populations have cumulative effective thermal inertias of 1700-2100 J m -2 s -0,5 K -1 and are consistent with the model rock distributions applied to total rock abundance estimates. The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) airbags have been successfully tested against extreme rock distributions with a higher percentage of potentially hazardous triangular buried rocks than observed at the Pathfinder and Viking landing sites. The probability of the lander impacting a >1 m diameter rock in the first 2 bounces is 1.5 m and >2 m diameter, respectively. Finally, the model rock size-frequency distributions indicate that rocks >0.1 m and >0.3 m in diameter, large enough to place contact sensor instruments against and abrade, respectively, should be plentiful within a single sols drive at the Meridiani and Gusev landing sites.

Evidence for Martian electrostatic charging and abrasive wheel wear from the Wheel Abrasion Experiment on the Pathfinder Sojourner rover

The Wheel Abrasion Experiment (WAE) on the Mars Pathfinder rover was designed to find out how abrasive the Martian dust would be on strips of pure metals attached to one of the wheels. A specially modified wheel, with 15 thin film samples (five each of three different metals), specularly reflected sunlight to a photovoltaic sensor. When the wheel was rotated to present the different sample surfaces to the sensor, the resulting signal was interpreted in terms of dust adhesion and abrasive wear. Many data sequences were obtained. Ground tests of similar wheels in a simulated Martian environment showed that static charging levels of 100–300 V could be expected. To prevent the possibility of Paschen discharge in the low-pressure Martian atmosphere, charge dissipation points were added to the Sojourner rover and were shown in ground tests to keep charging levels at 80 V or less. Nevertheless, significant dust accumulations on Sojourners wheels may be interpreted as evidence for electrostatic charging. Simple considerations of the expected maximum level of charging and electrostatic dust adhesion lead to an estimate for the size of the adhering dust grains. From the WAE data, it is hypothesized that the photoelectric effect is the most important mechanism for slow discharge in Martian daylight. Sensor signals obtained late in the Pathfinder mission show that significant wheel wear was seen on the metal wheel strips, with the most wear on the thinnest aluminum samples and the least on the thickest nickel and platinum samples. An estimate is made of the reflectance of the adhering Martian dust. The depth of dig of the WAE wheel shows that the dust is in some places very loose and in others tightly packed. Finally, comparison of the WAE results with ground test results makes possible a comparison of the Martian soil with mineral grain types and sizes found on Earth and show that the Martian dust is fine-grained and of limited hardness.

The Mars exploration rover: an in situ science mission to Mars

In this paper the concept for a mobile vehicle system which performs an in situ science mission to Mars is described. This rover mission with its requirements for driving, positioning at science selected targets, and remote and in situ measurement will utilize the technologies for hazard avoidance and autonomous navigation supported by ground operation tools which use rover-based imagery for position estimation and motion planning.