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Encyclopedia entry

Mars rover

Category

Original archive entry. The text, images and links below are kept as they were written.

Category of spacecraft.

Subtopics

  • Marsokhod Russian manned Mars rover. Study 1961. Surface transports were part of all Soviet Mars expeditions.
  • DRM 1 Mars Local Rover American manned Mars rover. Study 1987. The local unpressurized rover for the Mars Design Reference Mission was conceptually the same as the Apollo lunar rover.
  • Mars Pathfinder American Mars rover. Mars lander with surface rover. Landed a mini-rover to the Mars surface. Test of airbag and rover technologies. First successful Mars landing mission since Viking. Mars Lander / Rover satellite built by Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for NASA, USA. Launched 1996.
  • DRM 1 Mars Rover - Pressurized American manned Mars rover. Study 1997. Hoffman and Kaplan proposed a large pressurized rover for long duration exploration sorties on Mars as a part of the Mars Design Reference Mission study.
  • MSL American Mars rover. Heavy, radioisotope-powered robotic Mars rover planned for an October 2010 arrival at Mars. It would carry instruments to definitively search for life in the soil. Mars rover satellite operated by NASA, USA. Launched 2011.