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The rover is a six-wheeled vehicle
28 x 63 x 48 cm weighting 11.5 kg and provided with a camera and several
instruments to analize the martian soil during seven martian days and within
about 10 m of the lander. The extended mission will include longer trips
away from the lander over about 30 martian days.
The rover is controlled by an Earth-based operator who use images obtained by both the rover and lander cameras. As the time delay will be between 6 and 41 minutes depending on the relative position of Earth and Mars, some autonomous capabilities are required. The on-board control system is an Intel 80C85 8-bit processor that will be used to compress the last image taken. Both the lander and the rover are equipped with black and white stereoscopic cameras and UHF communications. An alpha-proton-X-ray spectrometer (APXS) is on-board the rover to asses the composition of rocks and soil. |