Mars Rover
description: space exploration vehicle designed to move across the surface of Mars
98 results
Red Rover: Inside the Story of Robotic Space Exploration, From Genesis to the Mars Rover Curiosity
by Roger Wiens · 12 Mar 2013 · 265pp · 79,896 words
RED ROVER Inside the Story of Robotic Space Exploration, from Genesis to the Mars Rover Curiosity ROGER WIENS BASIC BOOKS A MEMBER OF THE PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP NEW YORK Copyright © 2013 by Roger Wiens Published by Basic Books, A Member
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or driving on another planet or asteroid. Over the past fifteen years, robotic space exploration has enjoyed a huge renaissance, starting arguably with the first Mars rover, the puny 23-pound Sojourner. Mechanical creations from Earth are orbiting Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars, the asteroid Vesta, Jupiter, and Saturn; others are on
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to be the bigger and more powerful successor to the twin Mars Exploration Rovers. NASA planned to follow a path of incremental development for its Mars rovers. Sojourner, which landed in 1997, was a minuscule technology-demonstration vehicle. At less than 25 pounds, it had no arm and no mast. It could
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it was to experience in space and on Mars. The shake test went fine, but the thermal test came out badly. In the case of Mars rover instruments, “bake” is a misnomer, as the real challenge comes at cold temperatures. We found that the spectrometer was clearly not built even for arctic
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of the two most expensive instruments was more than $150 million. This is not too surprising, given that the much smaller payload of the previous Mars rovers cost well over $40 million, not adjusting for inflation. Another component that was costing a lot more than expected was the Sample Arm and Sample
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Center. The meeting was open to anyone, not just the Curiosity team. Although many of the attendees were veterans of the two previous generations of Mars rovers, notably absent were the MER science leaders Steve Squyres and Ray Arvidson. Their absence represented the shift in leadership for the new mission. The assembly
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and on robotic exploration. Managing Martians, by Donna Shirley, Broadway Books, 1998, 277 pages. This book was written by the JPL manager of the first Mars rover mission, which landed a toy-sized rover that lasted two months. A Traveler’s Guide to Mars, by William K. Hartmann, Workman Publishing Company, 2003
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Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet, by Steve Squyres, Hyperion, 2005, 422 pages. Steve was the project scientist for the second Mars rover mission. In this book he describes this JPL project and the first several months on Mars. Space Invaders: How Robotic Spacecraft Explore the Solar System
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Crane, (ins. img. 13), 145, 162, 194, 203, 204, 207, 208, 213 Slow Motion Field Test, 172–176 Smithsonian Museum, 183 Snodgrass, Roger, 55 Sojourner, Mars rover, 98, 171 Solar system, formation of, 62, 63, 64 Solar wind, described, 17, 24n Solar-wind concentrator design, 27, 35, 36, 63, (ins. img. 1
Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account From Curiosity's Chief Engineer
by Rob Manning and William L. Simon · 20 Oct 2014 · 237pp · 76,486 words
projects. At the same time, I would continue to be an active part of a loose-knit group juggling ideas for landing a much larger Mars rover, something we initially called a “MegaRover” but was soon being called the “Mars Smart Lander.” Without Pathfinder and Sojourner, we couldn’t have built Spirit
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Pathfinder in the 1990s and had led the project-level system engineering on Mars Exploration Rover with me, on which she and her team pioneered Mars rover operations concepts. By then she had become the most experienced Mars surface operations engineer within NASA. Jennifer and her husband, who was in the Air
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strings to help their own scientists and gain national prestige by establishing a foothold in the relatively new art of developing space hardware for a Mars rover. “Frankly,” Roger says, “I figured the chances of our instruments being selected were lousy. We had not yet proven we could build an instrument that
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. The rock had been given the name “Jake Matijevic,” in honor of MSL’s Surface Operations Systems chief engineer and former manager of the first Mars rover, the little Sojourner, who had passed away just days after the landing. Like the Coronation results, these analyses showed this basaltic “lava” rock to be
The Design and Engineering of Curiosity: How the Mars Rover Performs Its Job
by Emily Lakdawalla · 5 Mar 2018 · 571pp · 111,306 words
Springer Praxis Books Space Exploration Emily Lakdawalla The Design and Engineering of Curiosity How the Mars Rover Performs Its Job Emily LakdawallaThe Planetary Society, Pasadena, CA, USA Springer Praxis Books ISBN 978-3-319-68144-3e-ISBN 978-3-319-68146-7
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’s science, from landing site selection, through pre-landing mapping, the operational adventure, and the science results. Look for Curiosity and Its Science Mission: A Mars Rover Goes to Work in 2019. Acknowledgments This book would not exist without the generous assistance of numerous members of the Mars Science Laboratory team and
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nuclear power design available in 2002 – the General Purpose Heat Source RTG used for Galileo, Ulysses, Cassini, and New Horizons – was not suitable for a Mars rover. It was too massive (more than a meter long and weighing 57 kilograms). It produced more power than needed (285 watts). Most importantly, its electricity
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Edgett K (2000) Sedimentary Rocks of Early Mars. Science 290:1927–1937, DOI: 10.1126/science.290.5498.1927 Manning R and Simon W (2014) Mars Rover Curiosity. Smithsonian Books, Washington, DC Mars Program Synthesis Group (2003) Mars Exploration Strategy 2009–2020 Mars Science Laboratory Mission Project Science Integration Group (PSIG) (2003
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2007 NASA (2008) Next NASA Mars Mission Rescheduled for 2011. Press release dated 4 Dec 2008 NASA (2009) NASA Selects Student’s Entry as New Mars Rover Name. Press release dated 27 May 2009 NASA Office of the Inspector General (2011) NASA’s Management of the Mars Science Laboratory Project. Report dated
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Project and Science Overview. Presentation to the First Landing Site Workshop, Monrovia, CA, USA, May 31-June 2, 2006 Wallace M (2012) Curiosity: The Next Mars Rover. Presentation to the Royal Aeronautical Society, Applied Aerodynamics Group Conference, 17–19 Jul 2012, London, UK Watkins M (2008) MSL Project Status and Landing Site
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Feb 2013 Footnotes 1NASA (2000b) press release dated October 26, 2000 2Mars Program Synthesis Group (2003) Mars Exploration Strategy 2009-2020 3Manning and Simon (2014) Mars Rover Curiosity 4Caffrey et al (2004) 5Manning and Simon (2014) 6Rob Manning credits Dara Sabahi with that realization 7NASA (2000a) Mars Program Independent Assessment Team Summary
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, on Mars, still had the brains of an interplanetary spacecraft. The next major task for the mission was to teach the spacecraft to become a Mars rover. Figure 2.34. Cropped sections from two rear Hazcam images from landing day. Left: RLA_397502188EDR_D0010000AUT_04096M1, taken at 5:18:39, less than
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data reconstruction. Paper presented to the 36th AAS Guidance and Control Conference, 1–6 Feb 2013; Breckenridge, CO, USA Manning R and Simon W (2014) Mars Rover Curiosity. Smithsonian Books, Washington, DC Martin-Mur T et al (2012) Mars Science Laboratory Navigation Results. Paper presented at the 23rd International Symposium on Space
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: 10.2514/1.A32737 NASA (2011a) Mars Science Laboratory Launch. Press kit dated Nov 2011 NASA (2011b) NASA Ready for November Launch of Car-Size Mars Rover. Press release dated 19 Nov 2011 NASA (2011c) NASA Mars-Bound Rover Begins Research In Space. Press release dated 13 Dec 2011 NASA (2012a) Mars
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, 4–11 Mar 2006, Big Sky, Montana, USA United Launch Alliance (2011) Atlas V MSL Mission Overview. Press kit. Wallace M (2012) Curiosity: The Next Mars Rover. Presentation to the Royal Aeronautical Society, Applied Aerodynamics Group Conference, 17–19 Jul 2012, London, UK Way D et al (2013) Assessment of the Mars
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Correction Maneuver was shared with me in an email by Rob Manning on January 8, 2015, and corrects timeline errors he made in his book, Mars Rover Curiosity 8NASA (2011c) 9JPL (2012b) 10Martin-Mur et al (2012) 11Martin-Mur et al (2014) 12Martin-Mur et al (2014) 13Table data are from Abilleira
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science on Mars, how they are supposed to work, and how things have occasionally gone wrong. Figure 4.1. Family portrait of the three JPL Mars rovers. In front is Marie Curie, the flight spare of the Sojourner rover, now a museum piece. At left is the Surface System Test Bed for
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system design. Article in Deep Space Communications and Navigation Systems Center of Excellence (DESCANSO) Design and Performance Summary Series Manning R and Simon W (2014) Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity’s Chief Engineer. Smithsonian Books, Washington DC NASA (2003) NASA Facts: Multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectic generator (MMRTG). Fact sheet
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/guest-blogs/20120821-limonadi-sampling-mars-3-drilling-challenges.html Article dated 21 Aug 2012, accessed 6 May 2016 Manning R and Simon W (2014) Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity’s Chief Engineer. Smithsonian Books, Washington DC Novak K et al (2008) Mars Science Laboratory rover actuator thermal design
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Space Res 57:1223–1240, DOI: 10.1016/j.asr.2015.12.040 Lemmon M T et al (2017) Dust devil activity at the Curiosity Mars rover field site. Paper presented at the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, The Woodlands, Texas, 20–24 Mar 2017 Maki J et al (2012) The
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Mar 2009 Gellert R et al (2015) In Situ Compositional Measurements of Rocks and Soils with the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer on NASA’s Mars Rovers. Elements 11:39–44, DOI: 10.2113/gselements.11.1.39 JPL (2009) Sample Analysis at Mars. https://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/Instruments/SAM
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, and science results – is beyond the scope of this book. You may read that story in the next book, Curiosity and Its Science Mission: A Mars Rover Goes to Work . When this book was submitted for publication in late 2017, the rover had just climbed onto Vera Rubin Ridge, seeing for the
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an honorary doctorate from The Open University in 2017. She is currently working on the sequel to this book, Curiosity and Its Science Mission: A Mars Rover Goes to Work . She resides in Los Angeles with her husband (who is not a planetary scientist) and two daughters. Index A Aeolis Mons aerogel
The Vinyl Frontier: The Story of NASA’s Interstellar Mixtape
by Jonathan Scott · 21 Mar 2019 · 307pp · 90,490 words
Peace Gardens Sanctuary in Kona, Hawaii). He created numerous artworks for NASA, he co-designed the ‘MarsDials’ artefacts – sundials placed on the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers inscribed with the words ‘Two worlds, One sun’ – and created time-capsule-like messages for future Mars explorers in the ‘Visions of Mars’ CD-ROM
We Are as Gods: A Survival Guide for the Age of Abundance
by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler · 13 Apr 2026 · 225pp · 76,418 words
approach. In 1990, Grenier, Brooks, and Colin Angle took these ideas into the market, co-founding iRobot to build everything from bomb-disposal robots to Mars rover prototypes. A decade later, they turned their attention to the home. In 2002, they introduced the Roomba and forever changed our perception of robotics. For
Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet
by Steven Squyres · 2 Aug 2005 · 554pp · 142,089 words
there and grab them and bring them back, in 2005 or whenever NASA got around to it. In one shot we could do a killer Mars rover mission and get NASA positioned so they could pull off the sample return mission they really wanted. This was too cool an idea, and there
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Manhattan. Lately they had begun to branch out into mechanisms for spacecraft. Steve’s note was terse. “I’ve heard you’re working on a Mars rover mission,” it said, “and I was wondering if there was anything we could do for you.” Well, yeah, just maybe you could. “Send me whatever
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. A few days after the landing, the following short piece ran in the Korea Herald, an English-language newspaper in Seoul: “The day after the Mars rover, Opportunity, landed on the red planet and sent the first batch of photographs last week, the country’s major afternoon daily, the Munhwa Ilbo, translated
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transmitted from Mars, was quoted as exclaiming: ‘Holy smoke . . . I’m just blown away by this.’ “Thereupon, the Munhwa Ilbo ran the headline: ‘The second Mars rover lands, sees mysterious smoke’ . . . It was fortunate for the Munhwa Ilbo that Dr. Squyres didn’t shout: ‘Holy cow.’ ” Copyright Copyright © 2005 Steven W. Squyres
The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World
by Sarah Stewart Johnson · 6 Jul 2020 · 400pp · 99,489 words
FOR MERIDIANI Ibid., p. 307. “HOLY SMOKES” Ibid., pp. 293–294; misunderstanding the expression, Korea’s major afternoon daily ran with the headline, THE SECOND MARS ROVER LANDS, SEEING MYSTERIOUS SMOKE. “HOLE IN ONE” Squyres, Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet, p. 294. BARELY ANKLE-HIGH Marcus
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of the Voyager imaging team. Steven Squyres, “The Morphology and Evolution of Ganymede and Callisto,” Cornell PhD thesis (1981). STIPPLED WITH BLUEBERRIES David R. Williams, “Mars Rover ‘Opportunity’ Images,” NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (June 16, 2004). COLUMBIA HILLS The Columbia Hills were named after the space shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated as
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Mahaffy et. al., “The Sample Analysis at Mars Investigation and Instrument Suite,” Space Science Reviews; Emily Lakdawalla, The Design and Engineering of Curiosity: How the Mars Rover Performs Its Job (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2018). SIMPLE COMPOUNDS C. Freissinet, et al., “Organic Molecules in the Sheepbed Mudstone, Gale Crater, Mars,” Journal of Geophysical
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of making the movie Gravity. For more information, see: Emily Lakdawalla, “Similarities and differences in the landing sites of ESA’s and NASA’s 2020 Mars rovers,” Nature Astronomy, 3 (2019), p. 190; Mike Wall, “4 Mars Missions Are One Year Away from Launching to the Red Planet in July 2020,” Space
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-Hosted Life on Earth and the Search on Mars: A Review and Strategy for Exploration,” Astrobiology (2019). SITE CALLED MIDWAY Paul Voosen, “NASA’s Next Mars Rover Aims to Explore Two Promising Sites.” Science 362, no. 6411 (2018), pp. 139–140. Midway’s strongest advocate in the landing site selection process was
Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life
by Ozan Varol · 13 Apr 2020 · 389pp · 112,319 words
light switch. If the drugs you’re developing were certain to work, if your client were certain to be acquitted in court, or if your Mars rover were certain to land, your jobs wouldn’t exist. Our ability to make the most out of uncertainty is what creates the most potential value
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reliability, we could expect 5,600 defects.”41 Simplicity also reduces costs. The Atlas V rocket—which has taken many objects, including military satellites and Mars rovers, into space—uses up to three types of engines for different stages of flight.42 This complexity drives up the expenses: “To a first-order
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the daily newspaper Munhwa Ilbo. The journalist wrote up the story of Opportunity’s historic Mars landing, summed up by the following headline: “The Second Mars Rover Lands, Sees Mysterious Smoke.” As another Korean journalist observed, it was fortunate Squyres didn’t say holy cow. Like their Viking grandfathers, our rovers were
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could do what it was supposed to do: avoid hazards, drill into rocks, take photos, and the like. It’s one thing to drive a Mars rover on Earth. But it’s something else to operate it on Mars, where everything, from atmospheric density to surface gravity, is different from Earth. The
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volatile environment of space before we can begin trusting them. We achieve that accuracy through a process called calibration. For example, each instrument on our Mars rovers had a calibration target. The fanciest target was built for our onboard camera, Pancam.8 The target was a sundial mounted on the rover deck
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Toor, “NASA Details Curiosity’s Mars Landing in ‘Seven Minutes of Terror’ Video,” Verge, June 26, 2012, www.theverge.com/2012/6/26/3117662/nasa-mars-rover-curiosity-seven-minutes-terror-video. 3. For distance, see NASA, “Mars Close Approach to Earth: July 31, 2018,” NASA, https://mars.nasa.gov/allaboutmars/nightsky
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.nasa.gov/redplanet/viking.html. 19. Squyres, Roving Mars. 20. Squyres, Roving Mars, 90. 21. NASA, Girl with Dreams Names Mars Rovers “Spirit” and “Opportunity,” (June 8, 2003) www.nasa.gov/missions/highlights/mars_rover_names.html. 22. Squyres, Roving Mars, 145. 23. Squyres, Roving Mars, 122. 24. The description of Spirit and Opportunity
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.youtube.com/watch?v=NI6KEzsb26U&feature=youtu.be. 25. John Callas, “A Heartfelt Goodbye to a Spirited Mars Rover,” NASA, May 25, 2011, https://mars.nasa.gov/news/1129/a-heartfelt-goodbye-to-a-spirited-mars-rover. 26. NASA, “NASA’s Record-Setting Opportunity Rover Mission on Mars Comes to End,” press release, February
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, 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI6KEzsb26U&feature=youtu.be; Dian Schaffhauser, “Steven Squyres Doesn’t Mind Failure: An Interview with the Scientist Behind the Mars Rovers,” MPUG [Microsoft Project User Group], February 9, 2016, www.mpug.com/articles/steven-squyres-interview. 26. Squyres, Roving Mars, 138. 27. Squyres, Roving Mars, 156
The Search for Life on Mars
by Elizabeth Howell · 14 Apr 2020 · 530pp · 145,220 words
, engineers put the new, improved wheels through their paces for their next mission. Named after Rosalind Franklin, the pioneer of DNA, Europe’s first-ever Mars rover will dig deeper into the surface, which some believe will provide the evidence life existed. An improved version of the self-contained chemistry laboratory known
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role, she became interested in how rovers would work on Mars and what technology would be needed. In the way of all space agencies, the Mars Rover program, which Shirley joined in 1987, grew very fast. Two years later, the Red Planet briefly flowered as a grand national goal after President George
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is by Ashwin Vasavada: “Our Changing View of Mars,” Physics Today, March 2017. For findings in Yellowknife Bay, see Kerr, R. A., “New Results Send Mars Rover on a Quest for Ancient Life,” Science, December 2013, and Ken Kremer, “Curiosity Celebrates 1st Martian Christmas at Yellowknife Bay,” Universe Today, 2014. The background
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on Spirit and Opportunity’s findings may be found in Koren, Marina, “NASA Mars Rovers Curiosity and Opportunity Are Having a Rough Year,” Atlantic, September 18, 2018, and Wall, Mike, “How NASA’s Opportunity and Spirit Rovers Changed Mars Exploration
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–2537: SAM Wet Chemistry Experiment,” Mission Update, Mars Exploration Program, September 24, 2019. The cautionary quote regarding the organics is taken from Ian Sample, “Nasa Mars Rover Finds Organic Matter in Ancient Lake Bed,” Guardian, June 7, 2018. Background on what happened in 2014 may be found in Wall, Mike, “Curiosity Rover
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news release, November 19, 2018. A good discussion of the other candidate sites is David, L., “Scientists Double Down on Landing Sites for Sample-Collecting Mars Rover,” Scientific American, October 22, 2018, and “Overview of Improvements on the Mars 2020, the Entry, Descent & Landing Technologies,” JPL Mars website. Information on the Sayh
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, interviewed on June 5, 2019. See Wall, Mike, “Meet ‘Kazachok’: Landing Platform for ExoMars Rover Gets a Name,” Space.com, March 21, 2019; “ESA’s Mars Rover Has a Name, Rosalind Franklin,” ESA press release, February 7, 2019; “ExoMars Landing Platform Arrives in Europe with Name,” ESA release, March 21, 2019; Amos
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to Find Out,” Newsweek, May 19, 2018; Wilks, Jeremy, “Will ExoMars Be the Mission to Find Life on Mars?” Euronews, November 23, 2018; Wilks, J., “Mars Rovers: The Red Planet Welcomes Careful Drivers,” Engineering and Technology, May 25, 2017; and “Mars Doesn’t Need Our Microbes: How to Keep the Red Planet
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Pristine,” Discover, June 2019. MOMA is described in detail in https://exploration.esa.int/web/mars; Todd, Iain, “Science Instruments Installed on UK-built Mars Rover Rosalind Franklin,” BBC Sky at Night magazine, August 22, 2019; “Moving on Mars,” ESA Feature, May 30, 2019; and Amos, J., “Rosalind Franklin
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Mars Rover Assembly Continued,” BBC News Online, August 27, 2019. The saga of the parachutes was covered in “ExoMars Parachute Testing Continues,” ESA website, “Our Activities,” August
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, 100, 106, 119, 131, 136, 140, 258, 273, 289, 319n Mars 2, 96, 325n Mars 3, 96, 325n Mars ’96 mission, 337n Mars 2020. See Mars rovers, Perseverance rover Mars Climate Orbiter, 136, 165 Mars Color Imager (MARCI), 136 Mars Descent Imager (MARDI), 71, 136, 137 Mars exploration programs, 128, 145, 158
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Polar Lander, 2, 136, 166 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), 12, 18, 20, 21, 63, 64, 69, 130–132, 134, 137, 181, 196, 197, 271, 351n Mars rovers, 40, 57, 58–62, 64–73, 77, 78, 83, 84, 125, 133–35, 137–40, 141, 143–45, 151, 152–58, 162, 164, 192, 254
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ramps and rails 274 shoulder joint 274 “wheel walking,” 275 Roscosmos (Russian space agency), 78, 271, 337n Ross, James Clark, 4, 23, 344n rovers. See Mars rovers; individual rover names Rubin, Vera, 68, 135, 323n rusty dusts, 64, 109, 113 Sagan, Carl, 93, 107, 269, 326n, 350n, 353n Sample Analysis at Mars
Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, From Missiles to the Moon to Mars
by Nathalia Holt · 4 Apr 2016 · 288pp · 92,175 words
JPL that powered early missiles, rocketed heavy bombers over the Pacific, launched America’s first satellite, guided lunar missions and planetary explorations, and even navigate Mars rovers today. My search unearthed a 1950s picture of the group, the women working at their desks. The image was crisp, yet the archivists at NASA
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. The code that Sylvia, Helen, Margie, Sue, Barbara, and their colleagues wrote would continue to work its way into spacecraft, navigation systems, climate studies, and Mars rovers. It would get spliced up and repurposed, pasted into different missions, sent out into space, driven on far-off planets, and even brought back to
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demise is detailed in Bruce Moomaw and Cameron Park, “Was Polar Lander Doomed by Fatal Design Flaw?,” SpaceDaily, February 16, 2000. More information on the Mars rovers can be found in Stephen Squyres, Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet (New York: Hyperion, 2005), and Rod Pyle, Curiosity
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: An Inside Look at the Mars Rover Mission and the People Who Made It Happen (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2014). In addition to a personal interview, Donna Shirley is quoted as saying
Mars Crossing
by Geoffrey A. Landis · 15 Jan 2000 · 340pp · 96,242 words
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