Students take aim at Mars exploration with wood and plastic

By David Brand

The Mars Exploration Rover, one of two vehicles scheduled to explore the surface of Mars in 2004, is built and seemingly ready for its trip, complete with a full payload of scientific instruments -- about two years in advance.

With the model of the Mars Exploration Rover are some of its student builders, from left, Ithaca College freshman Emily Dean; and from Cornell: Phil Chu '02; Renee Hillaire '02; team leader Miles Johnson '02; Heather Arneson '02; and Matt Siegler '03. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

But this is not the real rover. It is an intricate, full-scale model made out of wood, plastic and aluminum. And instead of exploring the Martian surface, it will be put on display in science museums in central New York.

It has been built by seven Cornell undergraduates, one Ithaca College freshman and two high school students working with Steven Squyres, Cornell professor of astronomy, who is the principal investigator on the Athena science payload to be carried by the long-range rovers.

The model was unveiled Feb. 9 at Tompkins County Public Library in downtown Ithaca. Some of the students were at the library with Diane Sherman, Athena project coordinator at the astronomy department, to explain how the rover works and how the NASA mission will deliver it to Mars, as well as some of the information mission scientists hope to learn from the science instruments the vehicles will carry.

It took the students from last summer to the end of the year to design, machine and construct the full-size rover. Its folding solar-panel "deck" has a span of nearly 8 feet by more than 5 feet, and the height from the wheels to the top of the tallest instrument is nearly 5 feet.

"As part of the NASA mission, we regularly do educational outreach, but this time we wanted to do a multifaceted effort that included not only work with schools but also that would get the general public involved," said Sherman. "When we build models of space vehicles, they are generally not full size. But for this rover, Steve [Squyres] wanted to do a full-size model and get the students involved in design and construction."

Painstakingly, the students carved the rover and its suite of scientific instruments out of everyday materials. "The only off-the-shelf items we used were the bolts," said team leader Miles Johnson, a senior majoring in mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE). The wheels are made from plywood sheets glued together, cut and then lathed. The folding solar panels are made of spray-painted Plexiglas. The high-gain and low-gain antennas and the panoramic camera (Pancam) are aluminum and plastic. And, extending from the rover like a prehensile, metal claw is a suite of tools and cameras and spectrometers used for a close-up look at Martian rocks -- an assembly machined from aluminum by Heather Arneson, an MAE senior. "It was very time-consuming," Arneson recalled.

The solar-panel deck even includes a model of the 3.25-square-inch sundial that is being sent to Mars aboard the rovers. Once the spacecraft has landed, the Pancam will monitor the sundial's shadow. Then the sundial lines can be put into the correct position and superimposed over the image of the sundial as it appears on the web.

The rover model is one of several contributions that young Cornellians have made to the 2004 landing. Another project involved the design and construction of a calibration target for two of the Athena science instruments. Students also participated in the calibration of rover cameras at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. And Dan Maas, a recent Cornell graduate, has produced a computer-generated video of the mission for NASA that dramatizes the mission with startling accuracy