Mars Exploration Rover mobility development - Mechanical mobility hardware design, development, and testing

The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Project was launched in mid-2000 to land two automobile exploration platforms at different science targets on the red planet. The centerpiece of each mission is the rover and its scientific load. Spirit and Opportunity are identical vehicles, each carries the same science payload and engineering subsystems. Through demonstrations, it became evident that the mobility capability of both rovers is exceptional, but the actual use of the rovers at expanded mobility requirement levels is strongly dependent on two major investments. First is the substantial cost, time, and manpower needed by the full mobility testing program. Second, accurate loads and dynamics requirements for the rover as a function of the terrain and soil conditions must be generated during the early design phases of the project, thus necessitating the dynamic modeling and simulation approach to mobility requirements definition.