PROTOTYPE air bags designed to cushion the impact as the NASA Mars Pathfinder lands on the Red Planet on 4 July, 1997, are tested against a rocky surface inside a vacuum chamber at NASA's Lewis Research Center, Plum Brook Station, Ohio. The Mars Pathfinder Discovery mission will include the landing of an instrumented spacecraft, equipped with a camera and a small roving vehicle on the Martian surface - the first landing on the planet since that of the NASA Viking 2 on 3 September 1976 (Flight International, 28 June-4 July).
Source: Flight International