ESA MARS Rover: Atacama Desert the site of a Mars simulation

In early October 2013, the Atacama Desert became the site of a Mars simulation for a week, as a team of scientists and engineers visited the area to test out their prototype Mars rover.

The test site is located close to European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Paranal Observatory and was selected due to its harsh climate and its physical resemblance to the red planet.

Additionally, the Atacama Desert is known for its virtually sterile soil, largely due to the lack of moisture in the region: this makes the area particularly suitable for simulating the lifeless Martian environment.

The recent trials in Chile have featured a rover named Bridget (provided by EADS Astrium, Stevenage in the UK), which is part of the SAFER field trials (Sample Acquisition Field Experiment with a Rover).

ESA’s 2018 ExoMars mission is acting as the reference mission for the trial.

The project aims to give the science team first-hand experience of remotely operating a rover, and acquiring field data from the three instruments during a field trial.

The rover operation will be run so as to be as near to a real mission as possible for the science team and the remote control centre.

Parallel testing is taking place from the UK’s remote control centre based at the Satellite Applications Catapult Centre in Harwell.

The three instruments on trial are CLUPI (a close-up imager), which is the equivalent of a geologist’s hand lens used for examining the fine details of rocks, a PanCam (panoramic camera) emulator called AUPE-2, and a ground penetrating radar called WISDOM, which will provide a detailed view of the Martian subsurface structure.