338-The Insane Engineering of the Perseverance Rover

Views of Perseverance’s Wheels Wiggling: The animated GIFs show NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover wiggling its front left wheel on March 4, 2021, the day Perseverance completed its first drive on Mars. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Neck and Head.
A mast for the cameras to give the rover a human-scale view.
This image, taken in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility’s High Bay 1 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, on July 23, 2019, shows a close-up of the head of Mars 2020’s remote sensing mast. The mast head contains the SuperCam instrument (its lens is in the large circular opening). In the gray boxes beneath mast head are the two Mastcam-Z imagers. On the exterior sides of those imagers are the rover’s two navigation cameras.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Perseverance rover’s body is called the warm electronics box, or “WEB” for short. Like a car body, the rover body is a strong, outer layer that protects the rover’s computer and electronics (which are basically the equivalent of the rover’s brains and heart). The body keeps the rover’s vital organs protected and temperature-controlled.

The warm electronics box is closed on the top by a piece called the Rover Equipment Deck. The Rover Equipment Deck makes the rover like a convertible car, allowing a place for the rover mast and cameras to sit out in the Martian air, taking pictures with a clear view of the terrain as the rover travels.

Illustrated here, the aluminum wheels of NASA’s Curiosity (left) and Perseverance rovers. Slightly larger in diameter and narrower, 20.7 inches (52.6 centimeters) versus 20 inches (50.8 centimeters), Perseverance’s wheels have twice as many treads, and are gently curved instead of chevron-patterned. April 03, 2020.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Like NASA’s previous rovers, Perseverance uses a “rocker-bogie” suspension system . The suspension system connects the wheels to the rover and controls how the rover interacts with the Martian terrain.

Perseverance is designed to withstand a 45-degree tilt in any direction without tipping over. For added protection, rover drivers avoid terrains that would tilt the rover more than 30 degrees.

Brains

The rover’s brains – its computer – are in its boxy body. The computer module, the Rover Compute Element (RCE), has two identical RCEs so there is always a spare “brain.” The computer memory tolerates extreme radiation in space and on Mars. The RCE interfaces with the rover’s engineering functions over two networks that follow an aerospace industry standard for the high-reliability airline and spacecraft requirements. The RCEs directly interface with the rover instruments for command and science data exchange.

Robots have replicated much of the human sensory experience on Mars. Cameras have given us sight, robotic hands, arms and feet have supplied touch, and chemical and mineral sensors have let us taste and smell on Mars.