The mission and operation of the Mars Pathfinder Microrover

The Microrover Flight Experiment (MFEX) is a NASA OACT (Office of Advanced Concepts and Technology) flight experiment which is planned to be delivered and integrated with the Mars Pathfinder (MPF) lander and spacecraft system for landing on Mars on July 4, 1997. After landing, the MFEX rover will be deployed from the lander and begin a nominal 7 sol (1 sol = 1 Martian day approximate to 24 hours, 40 min.) mission to conduct a series of technology experiments, deploy an alpha proton x-ray spectrometer (APXS) on rocks and soil, and image the lander. This mission will be conducted under the constraints of a once-per-sol opportunity for command and telemetry transmissions between the lander and earth operators. As such, the MFEX rover must be capable of carrying out its mission under supervised autonomous control, in which, for example, goal locations are commanded and the rover navigates and safely traverses to these locations. In this paper, the mission of the MFEX is described, along with the on-board and ground-based systems which provide the capability for operating the vehicle.