What are the major difficulties the Mars Rovers went through?
There were many difficulties to be overcome when the rovers were designed and built, and more difficulties during launch, and from that point the rovers had to perform in the alien, inhospitable environments of space (during months-long cruise from Earth to Mars) and Mars (during their missions on the surface). Here’s a short list of some of the largest difficulties (other scientists or engineers might come up with a different “top ten”): • Extremely tight schedule to solve all the problems below: • Fitting a 174 kg rover (with enough solar panel area to power it on Mars) into a small enough volume to fit inside the airbags. If less solar panel/power, then much shorter mission. • Making the airbags tough enough to survive landing, even if there were some winds blowing the rover+parachute sideways • Designing system with descent camera and auxiliary rockets to detect strong winds and counteract these at the last minute to assure a safe landing • Designing and building all the instrument
