(CNN) -- During its life on Mars, Pathfinder peered into a few of the planet's intrinsic mysteries. However, the driving force behind this NASA project was more to test technological capability than to make scientific discoveries.
In essence, the whole Pathfinder experience was designed to help find the best way to build, land and operate future spacecraft to advance our knowledge of Mars -- and perhaps someday land humans there.
Pathfinder's arrival on the Martian surface was a major test of technology. Rather than establishing an orbit to slow down the ship and gradually descend, as landing crafts have done in the past, Pathfinder essentially
crash-landed.
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An animated picture of how Pathfinder crash landed - with balloons - on the Mars surface
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Just before the point of impact, four giant balloons inflated, allowing the craft to bounce on the surface until it came to a stop. It was traveling about 40 miles per hour (72 km per hour) when it hit the surface.
The advantage to this approach is that Pathfinder was able to bounce to a stop in rocky or rough areas. The Viking craft, which went to Mars in 1975, were limited to landing in a flat plain likened to Mars' equivalent of the Sahara Desert. But Mars' mountainous regions and canyons are considered more interesting, and potentially more important, in gaining a fuller understanding of the planet.
Pathfinder also conducted experiments designed to test the feasibility of turning Mars' atmosphere, which is 95 percent carbon dioxide, into rocket fuel by combining it with ceramic material at a temperature of about 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit (about 830 degrees Celsius).
Because of the distance between Earth and Mars, fuel will have to be made there if spacecraft are to
one day blast off of its surface to return to Earth. Pathfinder's assignment was to test various solar power technologies that might create the requisite temperature on what is, by human standards, a freezing
planet.
Pathfinder also gathered data on the effect of dust on space equipment. That is an important realm of knowledge for Mars exploration, as the dry planet is given to huge dust storms.
