14 DAY TRIAL // An engineering unit for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity has recently been taken out for a test drive in the hard Mojave Desert of California. Engineers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) were interested in observing how the machine behaved under real-life conditions.
Though only a skeleton of the actual MSL robot, the rover was developed in such a way that it displayed the same behavior as the actual explorations vehicle would on Mars. The test drive was carried out because the landing eclipse for Curiosity was recently narrowed down.
This means that it will land closer to Mount Sharp, inside Gale Crater, but also that there's a more significant chance the machine will be deposited on sand dunes. The Mojave test drive saw the rover negotiating slopes inclined at angles between 15 and 25 degrees.
JPL experts monitored where the vehicle reached its breaking point, as in where it stopped being able to climb further. This will be very useful, as Curiosity will attempt to investigate the slopes of Mount Sharp. The rover is scheduled to land on Mars on August 6.