Space scientists have recreated the extreme weather conditions of Mars in the London commuter belt to prepare the new Rover robot for its mission to track down life on the Red Planet.
Experts at UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Dorking have built the “head and eyes” of the Rosalind Franklin Rover which is due to blast off from Kazakhstan in 2022.
Named after the Notting Hill-born DNA pioneer, the newest rover robot will drill for signs of water in rocks and sample the air, taking 3D images as part of the £900 million ExoMars astrobiology project, a joint European Space Agency and Russian venture.
The scientists today revealed how the camera system they built was put through a gruelling process nicknamed “shake and bake”, which pummelled the delicate instruments to simulate intense vibrations of rocket take-off, the tough seven-month space flight and bumpy landing when its parent capsule floats down by parachute.
The rover’s cameras, wiring and oblong metal box protecting them were also heated and frozen to replicate minus 120C Martian nights in thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, and daytime heat up to 50C.
The 3D and macro optics Panoramic Camera system, or PanCam, features three high-resolution cameras that will be perched atop a mast with multi-coloured atmospheric filters to “see” traces of water and dust.
Photos will help the six-wheeled rover find the best spots to drill two metres below the surface to collect samples.
PanCam’s principal investigator Professor Andrew Coates, a deputy director at the laboratory, said: “You can’t just take a high-street camera and send that to Mars.
“The tests that have been done here to make sure it will survive include a vibration test, something where you effectively shake the instrument to make sure it will survive the launch on the rocket, and a shock test to make sure it will survive the landing. We’ve also simulated what it sounds like inside a rocket when it goes off.
“Once you’re on the surface of Mars it’s a really harsh environment.”
Every batch of images of the Martian landscape —compressed in a zip file each day — will take as little as seven minutes to cover the average 140 million miles back to mission control on Earth via the rover’s orbiting satellite.
