Manned Mars rover

Pressurized rovers for a human expedition to planet Mars

DRMA 5.0 "commuter" Mars base, featuring a pressurized rover for two, with a 5 kilowatt Stirling radioisotope generator for power.

An unmanned rover's wheel on Mars

Manned Mars rovers are a component of many designs for a human mission to the planet Mars. For example the Austere Human Missions to Mars proposal proposed including two rovers on its unmanned power and logistics cargo lander. Each rover could hold a crew of two in a pressurized environment, with power coming from a Stirling radioisotope generator.

Mars One, a Mars colonization plan intended to be funded by a TV show, plans an unpressurized manned rover capable of traveling 80 km (50 miles). They said a possible supplier was Astrobotic Technology.

The Manned Mars Exploration Rover won a design award in 2010. Some features included live-aboard capability, a winch, airlock, and six foam core wheels. It featured modular construction so it could be assembled from smaller parts, and the suggested power source was radioisotope batteries. An example of RTG use is the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft whose radioisotope power system produces several hundred watts of electrical power.
It produces this amount power continuously with a slow decline over decades, and with even larger amount of heat production at the same time. The electricity is produced from the heat given off by radioactive decay.

See also

• Mars rover
• Human mission to Mars
• Space Exploration Vehicle
• Johnson Sea Link (a submersible with a clear sphere for viewing)
• Lunar Roving Vehicle (Manned rover of Apollo missions, used on Moon in 1970s)

External links

• Von Braun rover by Colliers (1954) (Smithsonian Magazine)
• James Cameron's rover
• Manned Mars Rover plan that won design award
• spaceflight.nasa.gov
• spaceflight.nasa.gov
• Links to various Mars art including speculated human roving systems