Rover, Surface System Test Bed 1, Mars Exploration Rover (MER)

This testbed rover was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) as part of the Mars Exploration Rover program. The twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, launched for Mars in July 2003. The MER program was unprecedented in the amount of time the twin rovers spent traversing Mars, and in the distance covered. Described as robotic geologists, these rovers explored the rocks and soil of Mars around two very different landing sites. Spirit landed at Gusev crater in January 2004, and Opportunity landed soon after in Meridiani Planum. The two rovers spent a combined 20 years exploring Mars, and traveled a combined distance of nearly 33 miles. They returned over 300,000 raw images of Mars during this time, and a wealth of scientific data.

This testbed version remained at JPL. It was used throughout the 15-year MER program, primarily in JPL’s In-Situ Instruments Laboratory. Over the 15-year period that the MER rovers were actively roving on Mars, the SSTB1 was a critical piece of hardware in troubleshooting and problem solving whenever the rovers faced physical obstacles or when JPL encountered mechanical challenges with rover wheels or the instrumented robotic arm. When the Spirit rover became stuck in a martian site called “Troy,” for example, the SSTB1 was placed in simulant soil environments to recreate the predicament of the rover in an attempt to figure out how to free it.

SSTB1 was retired after the Opportunity rover ceased operation on Mars in February 2019. It was transferred to the Museum in 2020.

Where this page came from

This page was imported from Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Released by the Smithsonian Institution under CC0 through Smithsonian Open Access.

Nobody has written it yet — it is the source material at a new address, which is why search engines are asked to skip it and why no one earns from it. It is up for grabs: take it on, and it is yours to rewrite and to earn from.