What is the Mars Rover made of?
The Mars Rover is built of a variety of different materials with different functions. In some ways one can compare the rover with an insect. This is mainly because the rover, like insects, has the “skeleton” on the outside. The “skeleton” of the rover consists of the body-shell containing the “guts” of the rover. This body shell is made of an aluminum alloy. The computer (the “brain”) of the rover and most of the teflon or Kapton isolated copper cables (nervous system) resides in this body-shell along with batteries that enable the rover to save energy for late evening, night and morning activities. To charge the batteries the rover relies on three panels of solar cells as energy collectors. The interior of the body-shell is insulated from the exterior by an almost perfect thermal insulator, aerogel. In this way the rover is able to maintain a reasonable temperature of its interior. Added to this shell are a lot of sensory organs (mostly eyes; cameras), the wheel suspension for all six
