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Projects: Red Rover Goes to Mars

DVDs on Mars

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Each of the two Mars Exploration Rover spacecraft carried a DVD provided to NASA by The Planetary Society.  This was only the second time that privately contributed hardware flew on a U.S. planetary mission.  (The first was The Planetary Society’s Mars Microphone on the Mars Polar Lander.)  The DVDs were mounted to the Spirit and Opportunity landers.   Each rover acquired several images of the individual DVDs before embarking on their historic journeys across Mars, leaving the landers and the DVDs behind.

Knowing that these snapshots would be returned from Mars, The Planetary Society built several engaging features into the design of the DVDs.  “Astrobot” LEGO® mini-figures were named through a public contest, and the two characters wrote “diaries” during the rover’s journeys.  The Astrobots contained magnets provided by the same scientific team that provided magnets for the rovers.  Color patches were designed to study color appearance under a Martian sky, and to teach about how space image processing works.  The DVDs were fastened to the rovers with clamps in the shape of LEGO bricks.  And around the rim of the DVD were printed encoded passwords.  Once deciphered from study of the first images transmitted from Mars, the passwords could be used to access additional activities.

The DVDs were produced by The Planetary Society in conjunction with Visionary Products Inc., along with hardware and labor donations from Plasmon OMS.

Images of the DVDs from Mars »

The Astrobot Diaries »