Rover, Marie Curie, Mars Pathfinder, Engineering Test Vehicle, ROVER, MARIE CURIE, MARS PATHFINDER, ENGINEERING TEST VEHICLE

The rover is a six-wheeled vehicle mounted on a "rocker-bogie" suspension. It has 6 wheels, each with its own drive motor. Four of the wheels are steerable. The wheels contain odometers to determine distance travelled. Instrumentation: The rover carries an Alpha-Proton X-ray Spectrometer (APXS), stereo black and white front cameras and a mono black and white rear camera. The APXS, a duplicate of the one used on Mars Pathfinder with minor modifications, is mounted on the back of the rover to study the composition of rocks and soils. The rear camera is for close-up imaging of the APXS targets and terrain imaging. The front cameras are also for terrain imaging as well as hazard detection. Electronics and batteries are stored in an insulated warm electronics box which is heated by 3 RHU's. Power is provided by 0.2 square meters of GaAr/Ge solar cells mounted on the flat top of the rover. Maximum power is 16 W at noon, greater than 10 W will be produced for 6 hrs each sol. Non-rechargeable lithium thionyl chloride (LiSOCl2) D-cell batteries provide backup. Communications are via UHF antenna and 9600 baud modem with the lander. The modem gives line-of-sight communication up to 500 m and an effective data transfer rate of 2 Kbps. On-board computing uses a single Intel 80C85 2 MHz CPU with 100 KIPs, 64 kB RAM main memory and 512 kB RAM temporary data storage. On-board hazard avoidance equipment includes accelerometers to determine tilt angle, laser stripers, and contact sensors.