Country of Origin: United States
Dimensions:
Overall: 2 1/2in. x 1ft 5in. x 4ft 5 3/4in. (6.4 x 43.2 x 136.5cm)
Materials:
Metal, plastic, velcro, mylar
Two ramps like this opened from the petal door of the Pathfinder Lander, allowing the Sojourner rover to exit the spacecraft once it had safely landed on the Martian surface in 1997. When images of the spacecraft and the rover on its petal were received on Earth, the flight team deployed the rover ramps. Once those ramps were unrolled, images of them and the terrain around their ends were sent back to Earth. Thereafter mission controllers commanded the rover to stand up and proceed down a ramp. From there it engaged in its science activities on the surface. These ramps were assembled on the Pathfinder engineering model in 2003.
NASA transferred this ramp to the Museum with the Pathfinder engineering model in 1999.
Transferred from Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
