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The In Situ Instrument Laboratory, August 25, 2009: MER testing

The In Situ Instrument Laboratory, August 25, 2009: MER testing
The In Situ Instrument Laboratory, August 25, 2009: MER testing On August 25, 2009 on the Mars Exploration Rover side of the In-Situ Instrument Laboratory at JPL, rover engineers were test-driving the engineering model of the rover (known as the Surface System Testbed or SSTB) on a sloping surface composed of coarse sand. Next to it sits the sandbox containing a mixture of materials designed to simulate the behavior of the soil at Troy on Mars, where Spirit was stuck. In the foreground, rover driver Sharon Laubach uses a theodolite to measure the SSTB's position after a test of driving in a crablike motion. In the background on the right, the SSTB Lite -- a stripped down, Mars-weight engineering model of the rover -- waits to perform similar tests. Emily Lakdawalla