NASA's newest, six-wheeled prototype Martian rover nicknamed Rocky 7 has successfully passed
its most rigorous field test in May of 1997, traveling six-tenths of a mile over rugged,
Mars-like terrain, while conducting science experiments and snapping 580 photographs along the way.
The week-long series of field tests, carried out May 23-30 at Lavic Lake, an ancient
lake bed about 175 miles east of Los Angeles, CA, was designed to simulate several
weeks of a real Mars rover mission and to test the rover's ability to drive much greater
distances than current rovers. In addition, Rocky 7 conducted five simulated science
experiments in real-time and collected samples of soil and rocks that would be retrieved
and returned to Earth by a later Mars mission.
Classrooms across the United States and as far away as Finland participated in a remote
driving test on the last day of the field work. The demonstration was designed to determine
how well the vehicle could be controlled remotely using a World Wide Web operator interface
called the Web Interface for Telescience. Six schools in California, Oregon, Georgia,
Idaho, Texas and Finland participated in the exercise to command the rover from their
classrooms, as scientists will do one day from their home institutions. IBM's Open
Systems Center provided the technical coordination for the schools and the field testing.
The Rocky 7 rover represents the newest model of rovers that may be sent to Mars in the
years 2001 and 2003.
"NASA is deeply committed to spreading the unique knowledge that flows from its
aeronautics and space research...."
-- Daniel S. Goldin, Administrator NASA
Additional information about the field tests is available on the World Wide Web at:
http://wundow.wustl.edu/rocky7 .
More information about rover development for future Mars missions is also available at:
http://robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/tasks/scirover .