Desert Trial for ESA Mars Rover

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Desert Trial for ESA Mars Rover

4 October 2013 Next week will see ESA’s most ambitious planetary rover test yet. Robotic exploration of a Mars-like desert in South America will be overseen from the UK, providing experience for future missions to the Red Planet.

The rover faces the desolate Atacama Desert in northern Chile, one of the closest terrestrial matches for Mars. Among the driest places on Earth, it lacks any vegetation and its red–brown soil and rocks make it look even more like Mars.

The aim is to build up experience in operating rovers on a planet, which requires a very different way of working from a satellite mission.

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ESA’s test rover begins exploring Atacama Desert

9 October 2013 ESA’s test rover has been fitted with scientific instruments and made its first tracks in the sands of Chile’s Atacama Desert. Meanwhile, team members have explored the area to select a suitable site for testing, flying a drone to produce an aerial map.

This week’s Sample Acquisition Field Experiment with a Rover, or SAFER, field trial is gaining experience in remotely operating a Mars rover prototype equipped with scientific instruments.

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