Explanations:The first robotic vehicle to land on Mars was the Sojourner rover, which was part of the Mars Pathfinder mission. This mission was launched by NASA on December 4, 1996, and it successfully landed on Mars on July 4, 1997. The Sojourner rover was a small, six-wheeled vehicle designed to explore the Martian surface and gather scientific data. It was equipped with cameras and scientific instruments to analyze the Martian soil and rocks.
The Mars Pathfinder mission was a significant milestone in space exploration because it was the first mission to deploy a rover on another planet. The rover was named Sojourner in honor of Sojourner Truth, a 19th-century African-American women's rights activist. The mission was designed to demonstrate the feasibility of using a low-cost lander and a rover to explore Mars, and it was a precursor to more advanced missions like the Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity rovers.
Before the Mars Pathfinder mission, other missions had landed on Mars, such as the Viking missions in the 1970s. However, these missions did not include rovers. The Viking missions consisted of two landers and two orbiters, and their primary goal was to search for signs of life and study the Martian environment. The Viking landers were stationary and did not have the capability to move around the surface of Mars.
The ExoMars mission, which includes a rover named Rosalind Franklin, is a more recent mission launched in 2016. It is a joint mission between the European Space Agency and the Russian space agency Roscosmos. The ExoMars mission aims to search for signs of past life on Mars and to study the Martian environment. However, it is not the first robotic vehicle to land on Mars, as the Sojourner rover had already achieved this milestone in 1997.
In summary, the Sojourner rover, part of the Mars Pathfinder mission, was the first robotic vehicle to land on Mars. This mission marked a significant achievement in space exploration and paved the way for future missions to explore the Martian surface in greater detail.