Want to name the next Mars Rover?

engineering careers  Want to name the next Mars Rover?

The ESA’s 2020 ExoMars rover is due to land on Mars in the spring of 2021. The UK Space Agency wants you to name it.

MarsRoverImage
An existing rover – ‘Bruno’ – at Airbus HQ

The ExoMars rover mission will be exploring the makeup of Mars. It will carry a drill and a suite of instruments dedicated to exobiology and geochemistry research.

The Rover weighs in at only 310 kg and is compact enough to fit under a descent module hood.

The rovers payload, PASTEUR, includes nine instruments across three categories.

ExoMars Panoramic instruments

PanCam: Panoramic Cameras to perform digital terrain mapping of Mars
WISDOM (Water Ice and Subsurface Deposit Observation on Mars): a ground-penetrating radar to characterise the stratigraphy under the rover

ExoMars Contact instruments

CLUPI (CLose-UP Imager on ExoMars): a camera system to acquire high-resolution colour close-up images of rocks, outcrops, drill fines and drill core samples
RLS (Raman Spectrometer): Raman laser spectroscopy to establish mineralogical composition and identify organic pigments
Ma_MISS (Mars Multispectral Imager for Subsurface Studies): a multispectral imager that will contribute to the study of the Martian mineralogy and rock formation
Adron: to search for subsurface water and hydrated minerals. Adron will be used in combination with WISDOM to study the subsurface beneath the rover and to search for suitable areas for drilling and sample collection

ExoMars Analytical instruments

MicrOmega-IR: a visible plus infrared imaging spectrometer for mineralogy studies on Martian samples
ISEM (Infrared Spectrometer for ExoMars): an infrared spectrometer to assess the mineralogical composition of surface targets. Working with PanCam, ISEM will contribute to the selection of suitable samples for further analysis by the other instruments
MOMA (Mars Organic Molecule Analyser): a gas chromatograph that will target biomarkers to answer questions related to the potential origin, evolution and distribution of life on Mars


The ExoMars rover competition is being run by the UK Space Agency.

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