Rovers and Robotics

At $2.5 billion, Curiosity is the most expensive rover that NASA has ever developed.It has as many as 10 scientific instrument and a 7 foot long robotic arm to assist it in the two year long mission it plans to complete on the surface of the Red Planet, Mars.

It has the most advanced state of the art technology, but it also has a drawback. It depends on its robotics to be driven. When it comes down to it the Curiosity is essentially the largest robotic laboratory that any space agency has ever constructed and launched into space on a mission.

Curiosity takes over the job of exploration on Mars from the older NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity. These two old work horses have worked the surface of Mars for nearly 6 years. Spirit shut down last year, but opportunity is still going strong.

The two rovers lasted well beyond their expected three months survival rate. They were tiny at two and a half feet when compared to the seven feet that Curiosity is. And they had barely rudimentary robotics to help them function. Nothing near the scale of the latest science project from NASA. Still they did set the trend going.