Mars 2020 rover taken for test drive

Where NASA’s next Mars rover is going, it won’t need roads, but it still passed its driving test.

Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, took the Mars 2020 rover for a spin on Tuesday as preparations continue ahead of its launch in July or August from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

“A rover needs to rove, and Mars 2020 did that,” said John McNamee, Mars 2020 project manager. “We can’t wait to put some red Martian dirt under its wheels.”

It rolled forward, backward and did a pirouette in a clean room at the JPL’s Spacecraft Assembly Facility clean room. The systems check was designed to make sure the rover can operate under its own weight and perform autonomous navigation.

“Mars 2020 has earned its driver’s license,” said Rich Rieber, the lead mobility systems engineer for Mars 2020. “This is a major milestone for Mars 2020.”

The largest rover ever to head to the Red Planet will make its way to Florida in the new year. The launch window opens July 17, 2020 and stretches to Aug. 5, which allows for the most economical flight to the fourth planet from Earth, with arrival on Mars slated for Feb. 18, 2021. The mission

Editor’s note

Arnold Pearlstein is away. His “The Stars This Week” column will resume on his return.

will launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

The rover is headed to Mars’ Jezero Crater, with the help of an aeroshell, parachute, descent vehicle and skycrane structure. Its mission is to measure climate and geology, search for signs of past life and collect samples that will someday make their way back to Earth.

Unlike previous rovers, Mars 2020 will be counted on to make decisions by itself as to where to drive. To accomplish that, the rover has higher-resolution navigation cameras and an extra computer on board to process images so it can map its way around hazards.

Its wheels are also more durable than those of previous rovers. It will be the fifth NASA rover following Sojourner, part of the Pathfinder mission in 1997; the rovers Spirit and Opportunity that arrived in 2004; and the most recent, Curiosity, which arrived in 2012. Only Curiosity remains active as NASA lost contact with Opportunity during a massive dust storm on the planet in 2018. Spirit stopped sending information in 2009.