Mars Exploration Rover Engineering Cameras

The NASA Mars Exploration Rover mission will launch two scientific spacecraft to Mars in 2003. The primary goal of the mission is to obtain knowledge of ancient water and climate on the red planet. Each spacecraft will carry one rover with a mass of ~150 kg and a design lifetime of about 90 days to the surface of Mars. The rovers are intended to travel up to 100 meters per day. The scientific payloads of the rovers will include a stereo pair of Panoramic cameras and a Microscopic Imager. The Panoramic cameras also support the engineering functions of high gain antenna pointing and navigation by solar imaging. The rovers have six additional cameras that will be used, exclusively, for engineering. All nine cameras share a common design, except for their optics. The focal plane of each camera is a 1024 × 1024-pixel frame transfer CCD. A stereo pair of Navigation cameras is mounted on a gimbal with the Panoramic camera pair. The Navigation camera pair is used for traverse planning and general imaging. Finally, one stereo pair of wide-angle Hazard Avoidance cameras will be mounted on the front (and one pair on the back) of each rover to autonomously generate range maps of the surrounding area for obstacle detection and avoidance.