Mars

Exploration

Rover

The Mars Exploration Rovers Mission consisted of two rovers: Spirit and Opportunity.  The point of this mission was to see whether there was any water on Mars or not.  NASA also wanted to learn more about the rocks, soils, and geographical features that might hold clues to any past water activity on Mars.  They sent up to of the exact same rovers because this way, they knew that if one of them failed, they would still have another to count on.  To be able to excavate things, the rovers needed special tools: the Pancam (Panoramic Camera) - shows texture and structure of local terrain; RAT (Rock Abrasion Tool) - removes dusty and old surfaces of rocks and reveales cleaner layers to study; MI (Microscopic Imager) - shows close-up images of rocks and soils; Mini-TES (Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer) - looks up and stores temperature profiles of the Martian atmosphere.  There are many more instruments used, but these are just some of the main ones.  The rovers also had different parts of them that resembled a human body: a body, brains, a neck and head, "5 senses", arms, feet, and legs.  Although Spirit and Opportunity were supposed to last for only 90 days, they are still operating with little trouble over four years later.  To read more about each rover in particular, click on the links below.

LINKS

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/overview/

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/mission/

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/science/

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/people/

Here would be a video...

And then here would be another video...but this one would be even with the other video