Bouncing to Land on Mars

They Saved a Mars Mission by Letting It Crash INTRO (0:00–0:25) What if the smartest

way to land on another planet was to stop trying to land at all? In the 1990s,

NASA had a problem. Mars missions kept failing. Budgets were shrinking. Computers were weak.

And every “safe” landing method was too complex to trust. Then someone proposed an idea that sounded

ridiculous: What if the spacecraft hit the ground… and bounced? THE PROBLEM (0:25–1:00)

The mission was called Mars Pathfinder. The goal: land a small rover on Mars, cheaply,

and prove it could work. But Mars is brutal. Its atmosphere is too thin for parachutes,

too thick to ignore, and once you enter it, you’re alone. No joystick.