NASA’s Mars Pathfinder spacecraft – a novel mission to send an inexpensive lander and roving prospector to the surface of Mars – has concluded its primary mission, fulfilling all of its objectives and returning a wealth of new information about the red planet.

Just try and find somebody who hasn’t seen at least some of the stunning alien landscapes sent back by the Mars Pathfinder mission.

For some people, a spacecraft flying 310 million miles and beaming back pictures of an alien Martian world is just half the marvel of NASA’s voyage to the Red Planet. The other half is that the images can immediately pop up in their dens and bedrooms on home computers.

What do you do when your rover gets stuck on Mars? Why, get it unstuck, of course. That’s what NASA scientists were doing Friday to the Sojourner rover, which got jammed on a rock when one of its six wheels rolled up the side. The mishap occurred when a controller on Earth miscalculated the distance to the rock.

Perhaps it wasn’t a surprise that a Mars Pathfinder exhibit was one of the biggest draws at Planetfest last weekend, drawing crowds eight and 10 deep around a wall of video screens showing a rover’s-eye view of the Martian landscape.

In a tribute to the late astronomer who turned on millions around the planet to the wonders of space, NASA on Saturday renamed the Mars Pathfinder lander the Carl Sagan Memorial Station.

NASA’s pint-sized Mars Pathfinder rover was on alien territory early Sunday EDT after engineers fixed a communications link that threatened to ruin its exploration of the Red Planet.

On this important day, the American people celebrate another exciting milestone in our nation’s long heritage of progress, discovery, and exploration: the first landing on the surface of Mars in over 20 years.

A piece of the airbag that cushioned the intense arrival of Mars Pathfinder today has forced a one-day delay in the Sojourner rover