Exo Mars Rover Prepares For The Shakedown Ahead Of A Mars Trip

Exo Mars Rover Prepares For The Shakedown Ahead Of A Mars Trip: The European Space Agency’s mission to search for life on Mars has to reach a significant milestone with its six-wheeled surface rover prototype ready for its shake and bake.

Exo Mars Rover Prepares For The Shakedown Ahead Of A Mars Trip

Built by Airbus Defence and Space north of London in Stevenage, Britain’s unlikely Space City, the so-called Structural Thermal Model is packing off to Toulouse, France, for a raft of tests to ensuring the real ExoMars rover handles anything the red planet can throw at it.

In the year 2020 mission going to plan it will be Europe’s first rover on Mars, following several successful NASA landings.

Europe’s last attempt to land a rover vehicle on the surface of Mars ending in disappointment in the year 2016 when Schiaparelli spans out of control and slamming into the red sand.

The ESA rover will be more sophisticated though, featuring a two-meter exploration drill and an autonomous navigation system.

That is the most exciting thing that has not done before, we’ve got a solid two-meter drill so it can go into the crust which is where we think life will be if it were still surviving, ExoMars Delivery Manager Abbie Hutty told Reuters.

At the surface the radiation is extreme and conditions too hostile.

Down below different layers of rock, maybe in a fissure where there may be water deposits can be a beautiful place for life to be still surviving.

Hutty will keep a close eye on the prototype tests in Toulouse where the launch from a Russian rocket will be simulated as well as the massive temperature variations it will endure 54 million km away on the Mars.

Data sent back from the ESA’s Mars Express satellite are helping scientists choosing the most suitable landing site.

The ExoMars Rover’s autonomous navigation, which will enable it to steer itself rather than wait 24 minutes for instructions from the Earth, has undergone testing at Airbus’s Mars Yard.

The Stevenage center has a mock-up of the planet’s surface complete with desert sand, boulders, and Mars-like light intensity, if not the radiation.

Its six wafer wheels made of thin strips of metal and unique suspension system means it can scale rocks and roll across the sandy landscape.

The cool thing about the wheels is that they are entirely metallic and give us the traction and grip of a rubber wheel without taking anything organic from earth.

They will be able to climb over rocks and also dig through deep sand,” Hutty says.

Once testing is competing in France, work will begin on building the finishing rover as well as a twin that will stay in Stevenage.

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