QUESTION:
Describe your spacecraft and instruments including what is unique, versus
ones in the past, that allowed it to be built quickly and cheaply.

ANSWER from David Dubov:
The Mars Pathfinder spacecraft is quite different from other missions built
at JPL. First of all, as a lander mission, the prime focus is on getting the
lander/rover instrument package safely to the surface of Mars. This means
that this spacecraft must be able to electro-mechanically transform itself
autononmously from a "cruise" configuration much like a Galileo (without the
cruise science observations of course) into a stable science platform on the
surface of Mars. All of this must be done on a budget quite small compared
with previous planetary missions. This adds considerably to the technical
challenge.

These challenges were met by first taking maximal advantage of past work: we
"inherited" hardware from the Cassini mission to Saturn; we utilized designs
of equipment flown to Mars on the Viking missions of the 70's; and we have
an improved understanding of the environmental uncertainties from science
observations obtained over the last 2 decades. Secondly, improvements in
computer technology have allowed us to model, design and test aspects of our
system that were impossible 20 years ago. Finally, we have built a small
"Skunkworks-like" team that has accomplished only that work necessary to do
the mission, with little red tape nor redundancy in effort.