sending back video wasn't really a mission objective either::::
Scientific Objectives
The rover's Primary Mission was planned for seven sols (Martian days). The rover was designed to interact with slightly more than 300 square meters of Martian terrain, though initial operations were conducted within a limit of 10 meters or less of the lander.
Primary objectives for the rover were 1) exit the lander as early as practical on the basis of lander stereoscopic images, 2) send initial vehicle performance and technology experiment data to the lander, 3) move a few meters and repeat objective #2, 4) acquire and transmit images showing the condition of the lander, 5) acquire images at the end of daily traverses for navigation purposes, or encounter, acquire, and transmit an image of a rock or soil patch for subsequent APXS analysis, 6) deploy APXS on the imaged rock or soil patch, if possible, for 1 to 10 hours duration for chemical analysis, 7) query the APXS for final data and transmit interim and final data to the lander, and 8) traverse diverse terrains and repeat objective #2.
An Extended Mission of 30 sols was planned and more than realized, as the governing spacecraft, rover and site-related factors permitted rover activities to continue for 81 sols. Extended Mission objectives were similar to the Primary objectives, with technology experiments amended to explore the diverse terrains further away from the lander.
As during the Primary Mission, Extended operations of the rover cameras were to yield a high resolution image dataset critical for navigation purposes and geologic analysis of structures in rocks and soil-like materials. The rover image data were to contribute to the technology experiments by affording high resolution stereoscopic and multispectral examination of 1) features targeted for APXS chemical analysis, 2) slumped or eroded surface material that had been excavated by the churning rover wheels, 3) aeolian effects on the exposed, upturned material, and 4) overturned rocks. This would aid in achieving the scientific objective of better understanding surface material properties such as grain size, bulk density, friction angle, cohesion, and compressibility, which could then be put in the larger context of geologic features seen in the lander IMP images.
Of the ten Technology Experiments, rover camera images were acquired to support the following six: a) Terrain Characterization, b) Basic Soil Mechanics, c) Wheel Abrasion, d) Thermal Characterization, e) Dead Reckoning and Path Reconstruction, and f) Vision Sensor Performance. For a description of these experiments, refer to [MATIJEVICETAL1997A].
Rover Camera Instrument Description