Where the first wheels ever rolled across Mars.
This is Ares Vallis, an ancient flood channel where Mars Pathfinder bounced to a stop on giant airbags on July 4, 1997. It carried Sojourner, a microwave-oven-sized robot that became the first rover to drive on another planet.
Claim your plot here →Pathfinder pioneered a cheap, daring landing method: wrapped in airbags, it hit the surface at speed and bounced across Ares Vallis before rolling to a halt and deflating. The lander, renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, then unfolded and let the little Sojourner rover trundle down a ramp onto the soil.
Over roughly three months — far beyond its planned week — Sojourner nudged up to rocks nicknamed things like "Yogi" and "Barnacle Bill," analyzing their chemistry with its onboard spectrometer. The rounded, jumbled boulders confirmed the region had been shaped by ancient floods, and the mission proved that mobile robotic exploration of Mars was truly possible.