Rover Mars

The firsthand account of the trials and tribulations of engineering one of the most complex pieces of space technology, the Mars Rover Curiosity, by its chief engineer Rob Manning

As an Engineer - crew member of one of the first Mars colonies - you are responsible for repairing and maintaining Mars Rovers. In this advanced simulator you will learn the internal details of various Mars Rovers and their components.

New interviews, graphics, and animation will revamp the 2012 special "Martian Mega Rover" which follows the two rovers operating on Mars – Opportunity, still rolling on Mars since 2004, and Curiosity, who landed in 2012. All the excitement about manned missions to Mars twenty years from now can be traced back to these two pioneering explorers, the only emissaries we have on the surface of Mars at the moment. Their discoveries and the vivid images they send home are a continuing source of inspiration, and the reason why we want to go back.

Geologists in the field climb hills and hang onto craggy outcrops; they put their fingers in sand and scratch, smell, and even taste rocks. Beginning in 2004, however, a team of geologists and other planetary scientists did field science in a dark room in Pasadena, exploring Mars from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) by means of the remotely operated Mars Exploration Rovers (MER).

This book describes the most complex machine ever sent to another planet: Curiosity. It is a one-ton robot with two brains, seventeen cameras, six wheels, nuclear power, and a laser beam on its head. No one human understands how all of its systems and instruments work. This essential reference to the Curiosity mission explains the engineering behind every system on the rover, from its rocket-powered jetpack to its radioisotope thermoelectric generator to its fiendishly complex sample handling system.