Space Robots & Rovers
Describe how robots and rovers have explored places humans cannot easily go: Mars rovers like Curiosity and Perseverance drive across Mars taking photos, collecting rock samples, and searching for signs of past water
What a learner can do afterwards
- Name at least one Mars rover (Curiosity or Perseverance) and state it drives on Mars's surface
- Explain that rovers take photos, analyse rocks, and look for evidence of water
- State why we send robots instead of people: Mars is very far away and has no breathable air
1 · Read
Some places are too far or too risky for people to visit right now. Mars is one of them. Instead of sending astronauts, we send robots called rovers to explore it for us.
Perseverance rolls across red, dusty ground on Mars. It stops by interesting rocks, snaps close-up photos, and drills a tiny sample to study. Scientists back on Earth study the pictures and samples for signs that water once flowed there.
We send robots instead of people because Mars is very far away, and its air is not safe to breathe. A rover can handle the long trip and the thin air just fine.
Rovers like Curiosity and Perseverance drive across Mars, take photos, study rocks, and search for old water, so people don't have to make the risky trip themselves.
More to read
Curiosity: Searching for Carbon
Mars is too far and too harsh for people to visit yet. So we send robots. The Curiosity rover landed in 2012. It is the size of a small car, with six wheels, a laser, a drill, and a laboratory inside. It drives across Gale Crater, climbing Mount Sharp. It zaps rocks with its laser to read their chemistry. It drills powder from rocks and analyses it. Curiosity found that Mars once had lakes and streams with water that was not too salty or too acidic. Conditions where microbes could have lived.
30.3 Searching for Life beyond Earth
Perseverance landed in 2021 in Jezero Crater, an ancient river delta. It carries 23 cameras, a helicopter called Ingenuity, and instruments to search for signs of past life. It collects rock cores that a future mission will bring back to Earth. Ingenuity made the first powered flights on another planet. Together, the rover and helicopter explore farther and faster. Earlier rovers: Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, proved we can drive on Mars. Each new rover is smarter and more capable.
Explore the Salish Sea - Unit 5: Ocean Tech
Robots go where humans cannot. Deep ocean, deep space, inside volcanoes, under ice sheets. Mars rovers are like remote-controlled cars with a 20-minute delay each way. Drivers on Earth plan each move, send the commands, and wait for the result. The rovers have hazard cameras and software to avoid cliffs and sand traps. They move slowly, a few metres per day, but they work for years.
Explore more
2 · Watch
به انگلیسیTake it off screen
Where it sits
Learn first
Optional connections
This opens up
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.