Rover (space travel)
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A rover (English for vagabond , wanderer ) is a manned or remote-controlled land vehicle in space travel , which is used to explore foreign celestial bodies . So far, rovers have been used on the moon , Mars and on asteroids . The permanent power supply of the vehicles either via solar cells (eg. As in Lunochod and Spirit / Opportunity ) or radionuclide as the Mars Science Laboratory . Heating can be done with radionuclide heating elements .
Techniques for locomotion
Various techniques can be used to get around. These include wheels , chain drives , “ walking ” on robotic legs, jumping or rolling . For example, the Rover Mascot was developed and successfully used by DLR , a small, cube-shaped rover that could make controlled jumps and thus move around in areas with low gravity.
Moon rover
Moon rovers are also known as "moon mobiles", based on the word automobile .
Started
- Lunochod 1 - Soviet lunar rover, launched on November 10, 1970 with a Proton K / Block D rocket
- Lunar Roving Vehicle - large rover for the transport of astronauts on the Apollo missions, controlled manually by astronauts, used in 1971/1972 on the Apollo 15 , 16 and 17 missions
- Lunochod 2 - another Soviet moon rover, launched on January 8, 1973 also with a Proton-K / Block-D rocket
- Jadehase - the first Chinese lunar rover was developed by the Chinese lunar probe on December 14, 2013 Chang'e 3 suspended
- Jadehase 2 - was on January 3, 2019 from the Chinese lunar probe Chang'e-4 on the far side of the moon suspended
- Pragyan - Indian moon rover of the Chandrayaan-2 mission , was not used after a failed landing in September 2019
Not started
- Lunochod (E-8 No. 201) - first Soviet lunar rover, destroyed by missile launch on February 19, 1969
- Lunochod 3 , another Soviet lunar rover to be taken to the moon in 1977; this mission has been canceled.
Planned
- First moon rover based on the Cuberover concept, launch with US lander Peregrine planned for 2021
- Hakuto-R - Japanese moon rover project, scheduled to start in 2023
Mars rover
Started
- Rover of the Soviet Mars spacecraft
- Mars 2 - Landing on November 27, 1971, destroyed on impact
- Mars 3 - landing on December 2, 1971, lander fell silent after 20 seconds, rover was not used
- Sojourner - small rover of the Mars Pathfinder mission, landing on July 4, 1997
- Double mission Mars Exploration Rover
- Spirit - Mars Exploration Rover (MER-A), landing in Gusev crater on January 4, 2004, last radio contact on March 22, 2010
- Opportunity - (MER-B), landed at Meridiani Planum on January 25, 2004, radio contact until mid-June 2018, February 13, 2019 Official mission completed.
- Curiosity - larger US Mars rover with nuclear power supply ( RTG ), launched on November 26, 2011, landed in Gale crater on August 6, 2012
- Rover of the Chinese Mars mission Tianwen-1
- Mars 2020 Rover - American Mars rover with the technology of Curiosity , but with different instruments and a planned sample return mission
Planned
- ExoMars Rover - European Mars rover with the ability to drill up to two meters deep; Start expected in 2022
Asteroid rover
Wheels are not well suited for locomotion on celestial bodies with very low gravity, as they require relatively high friction ( rolling resistance ) through pressure. Jumping with the help of flywheels is the preferred technique here.
The Japanese mission Hayabusa deployed the small, only 591 gram rover MINERVA on the asteroid (25143) Itokawa , which was supposed to jump forward. However, this was lost when it was released in November 2005. The follow-up mission Hayabusa 2 had a total of four small rovers on board to drop them on the asteroid (162173) Ryugu . They could move by jumping. Three of them landed safely in 2018, including Rover-1A and Rover-1B, which are further developments of MINERVA. The largest of these four rovers is the MASCOT , which weighs almost 10 kg and was also used successfully; the fourth, Rover 2, crashed onto the meteorite in October 2019 after losing control before landing.
Web links
- NASA: Mars Exploration Rover Mission (English)
- Planetary Society: Mars Exploration Rovers (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ David S. Wettergreen, Timothy D. Barfoot: Field and Service Robotics: Results of the 10th International Conference . Springer, 2016, ISBN 978-3-319-27702-8 , pp. 284 ( books.google.de ).