Mission Objectives
- To prove that the development of "faster, better and cheaper" spacecraft was possible (with three years for development and a cost under $150 million).
- To show that it was possible to send a load of scientific instruments to another planet with a simple system and at one fifteenth the cost of a Viking mission. (For comparison, the Viking missions cost $935 million in 1974 or $3.5 billion in 1997 dollars)
- To demonstrate NASA's commitment to low-cost planetary exploration by finishing the mission with a total expenditure of $280 million, including the launch vehicle and mission operations.
Read more about this topic: Mars Pathfinder
Famous quotes containing the words mission and/or objectives:
“The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Along the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation is chosen and entered upon as a means to a purpose but is ultimately continued as a final purpose in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent stupidity in which we indulge ourselves.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)