Mars Rover – A mid-size EV?
The Mars 2020 Mission which was launched on 30 July 2020 is very close to touchdown on the red planet with its Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter. With the landing just a few hours away, the world is preparing for a grand celebration of this historic event. We are celebrating this event in our style. In this article, we will discuss the technical specifications of the Perseverance rover. Let’s go.
Dimensions
The Perseverance rover is 3048mm long, 2743mm wide and 2133mm tall. To relate, the rover is a bit longer than the Tata Nano and a bit taller than the Isuzu D-Max V-Cross. The main reason behind its tall height is the setup for multiple cameras and sensors which are attached to the rover to give it a human-scale perspective of its environment.
Power-Source
The Perseverance Rover uses nuclear power to fuel itself. To explain in very simple terms, the heat from the nuclear decay of a radioactive material gets converted into electricity, which directly powers the rover. Let’s not start talking about ranges here. The setup is capable of producing heat and electricity for decades even under tough conditions.
The Perseverance rover also gets two-lithium ion rechargeable batteries which are installed to assist the regular electricity when conditions demand.
Wheels
The rover gets 20.7-inch wheels which are made of aluminium with spokes made of titanium. The wheels are specially designed to give the rover excellent traction on a soft surface like sand as well as hard surfaces like rocks. The spokes for wheels have been curved to give the rover springy suspension-like support.
Features
The rover has been loaded with features if we talk in terms of Mars standards. The rover gets a maximum tilt angle of 45-degrees in any direction, however, for precautionary measures, the electronics on the Perseverance avoid any surface which would push the rover to tilt more than 30-degrees.
The rover also sports ultra-high frequency antennas to communicate with the scientists on Earth. However, the rover does not directly communicate with the satellites on the planet but with NASA’s orbiters which are already present around Mars. This reduces the communication time and effort, thus making the overall process efficient.
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