NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory team have been gaining experience of operating a rover ahead of the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars later this year.
The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft carrying the Curiosity rover was launched last November and is due to land in the Gale Crater on Mars on 5 August 2012.
Ahead of the arrival the MSL team wanted to get some hands on experience of using the remote controls and seeing how a rover works in the desert.
The rover used for the tests has a full scale replica of the mobility system on Curiosity, but lacks the abundance of scientific instruments that the real Mars rover has. The stripped down version used for the tests weighs about the same on Earth as Curiosity will on the lower gravity red planet. The replica rover has thus been dubbed Scarecrow, due to fact that it doesn’t have a computer “brain” like Curiosity.
The tests involved collecting information on how well the rover manages on various sandy slopes. In addition, the rover was driven on windward and downwind parts of the sand dunes. This was done in order to test Curiosity’s ability to tackle similar dunes near a five kilometre mountain in the centre of Gale Crater.
The landing of the Curiosity rover will certainly be challenging. Firstly, the landing ellipse, which is the area in which the rover has to land, is only 20 by 25 kilometres. Secondly, Curiosity is a heavy beast compared to previous rovers. This means that in addition to the normal parachute needed to slow entry into the Martian atmosphere, a crane is also needed to lower the rover gently to surface of the red planet.
Curiosity has ten scientific instruments which it will use during its two year mission. The main goals are to search for evidence of past or present environment that might have be suitable for life.