DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: First though, a look at "CNN 20," three years ago today, the Mars Pathfinder landed on Mars. Let's take a look.</s>JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN MIAMI BUREAU CHIEF: Well, here was this robotic vehicle that was streaking through the atmosphere of the red planet for this fiery landing on Mars, and they were going to use this unique approach of airbags. And they were going to bounce on Mars when they hit and then bounce across the Martian landscape, finally come to rest. The airbags would deflate, these petals would open up and this lander would just unfold on the Martian surface. And everybody thought that the engineers and the scientists, who put that had put this program together, were absolutely nuts; that they could never pull this off. We were at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California. It's a surreal feeling because here you are reporting as if you are there on an event that is transpiring hundreds of millions of miles away. And then finally, they get that first signal back that the vehicle was on the Martian surface and there was this enormous uproar of cheers and hugging and just screaming. (</s>BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, JULY 4, 1997) DONNA SHIRLEY, MANAGER, MARS EXPLORATION PROGRAM: We got a signal. Wow! My gosh. Wow!</s>ZARRELLA: So that's the low gain? that is the low gain.</s>SHIRLEY: It made it. It made it.</s>ZARRELLA: The Pathfinder had exceeded every single expectation that these scientists and engineers had. It had done things they never thought it could achieve. And this was one of the most brilliant successes that the program had had since man landed on the moon.
CNN 20: Pathfinder Lands on Mars