49 Fun Facts About Mars Rovers

Sojourner, the first rover to drive on Mars, arrived in 1997 as part of which NASA mission?

Mars Pathfinder's rover was planned to work for seven sols but kept going for 83, until the lander fell silent in September 1997.

Sojourner was named after Sojourner Truth, who was what?

An abolitionist who freed herself from slavery in 1826, she took the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 because she felt called to travel and preach.

What cushioned Sojourner's lander when it hit the Martian surface in 1997?

Giant airbags wrapped the lander, which bounced at least 15 times before rolling to a stop, and NASA reused the same airbag design for Spirit and Opportunity.

After landing, Sojourner's lander was renamed in honour of which astronomer?

Carl Sagan, who died in December 1996, had pushed NASA to turn Voyager 1's camera around for one last, famous photo of distant Earth.

Rocks at Sojourner's landing site were named after what?

Cartoon characters lent their names to rocks such as Scooby Doo and Casper, and a big boulder became Yogi because it looked like a bear.

Sojourner relied on its lander for what?

Talking to Earth: the lander relayed its data, and while driving, Sojourner traded 'heartbeat' signals with the lander at each stop before moving on.

Sojourner's identical flight spare, later given to the Smithsonian, is named after whom?

Marie Curie copied Sojourner's moves in a Mars-like test area during the mission, and NASA later planned to send it on a 2001 Mars mission that never flew.

What is the name of the six-wheel suspension first flown on Sojourner and reused on later rovers?

Rocker-bogie joints use no springs, so all six wheels stay pressed to the ground while the rover climbs over rocks as big as one of its wheels.

How did engineers stop the computer resets on Sojourner's lander?

A software patch from Earth did it: engineers recreated the priority-inversion bug on a lab replica, then uploaded a short program that switched on priority inheritance.

Sojourner's landing site, Ares Vallis, holds rocks swept there by what?

A flood huge enough to carve one of Mars's largest outflow channels left a wide variety of rocks at Ares Vallis, one reason scientists chose the site.

Spirit landed in January 2004 inside which impact crater?

Gusev was chosen as the landing site because it looked like an old crater lakebed, with the long Ma'adim Vallis channel running into it.

Spirit's landing site was named as a memorial to the crew of which spacecraft?

Columbia broke apart on 1 February 2003, and Spirit later climbed Husband Hill, one of seven nearby hills named after the shuttle's crew.

Built for 90 sols, how long did Opportunity keep exploring?

Almost 15 years: a rover designed to drive just 1,000 metres ended up covering more than 45 km across Mars.

When NASA couldn't free Spirit from soft sand, what did it turn the rover into?

A stationary science platform: stuck in place, Spirit began tracking tiny wobbles in Mars's rotation to learn whether the planet's core is liquid or solid.

Spirit's broken front wheel, dragged through the soil, uncovered silica that likely formed in what?

Hot springs or steam vents likely made the nearly pure silica, strong evidence that ancient Mars was much wetter than it is today.

Both Spirit and Opportunity carry metal salvaged from where?

The pieces were turned into shields protecting cables on the drilling tools.

Opportunity landed on which Martian plain?

Meridiani Planum won the landing because orbiters had mapped hematite there, a mineral NASA took as a sign that liquid water once flowed.

What is thought to have cleared dust off the solar panels of NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers?

Gusts of wind are the likely cleaners, and each clean sweep pushed the rovers' solar power back up.

Opportunity found the ground strewn with tiny hematite balls that NASA scientists nicknamed after which fruit?

Blueberries was the team's name for them, even though the little hematite balls are grey, and they covered the rover's landing plain in huge numbers.

In 2014, Opportunity broke the off-world driving record set in 1973 by a Soviet rover on which world?

The Moon: Lunokhod 2 had held the off-Earth driving record since 1973, until Opportunity passed it in July 2014 after about 40 km.

The pattern of holes in Curiosity's wheels spells out JPL in which code?

Morse code: the dots and dashes spell JPL, the lab that built the rover, and the tracks they leave let its cameras measure how far it has driven.

What silenced Opportunity in June 2018?

A planet-wide dust storm blotted out the sunlight the solar-powered rover needed, and Opportunity never answered the more than 1,000 signals sent to wake it.

Who actually wrote "My battery is low and it's getting dark", credited to Opportunity?

A journalist paraphrasing NASA data, Jacob Margolis, tweeted the line in February 2019, and it spread so widely that he wrote an article explaining the rover never said it.

What did the rock Opportunity found beside its discarded heat shield turn out to be?

A meteorite: it is mostly iron and nickel, so it likely came from the metal core of a small planet that was later smashed apart.

Which crater did Opportunity reach in 2011 and treat as a "second landing site"?

Endeavour, 22 km wide, was worth a drive of nearly three years because orbiters had spotted clay minerals along its rim.

Curiosity landed in August 2012 inside which crater?

Gale was chosen because its rocks held clays and sulfates that form in water, and Curiosity soon found evidence that Mars once had habitable environments.

Curiosity's touchdown spot on Mars was named after which author?

Ray Bradbury had died that June, and NASA's Michael Meyer said many on the team were inspired by his stories to dream of life on Mars.

A calibration target for Curiosity's close-up camera includes which old American coin?

A Lincoln penny from 1909 sits on the target, a nod to the geologists' habit of putting a coin in close-up rock photos to show scale.

Curiosity is powered by the decay of which isotope?

Plutonium-238's decay heat gives Curiosity power day and night whatever the weather, and spare heat is piped around to keep the rover's systems warm.

Curiosity was lowered to the Martian surface on nylon cords from what?

A sky crane, a rocket-powered descent stage, hovered while it lowered the rover on cords, then cut them and flew off to crash-land on its own.

Curiosity's ChemCam instrument studies rocks from a distance by firing what at them?

A laser vaporises a pinpoint of rock into a glowing spark, and ChemCam reads that light to work out what the rock is made of.

What tune did Curiosity play to itself on 6 August 2013?

It marked one Earth year since landing.

Curiosity takes its selfies with a camera on what?

Arm: MAHLI, the camera on the end of Curiosity's arm, was built for close-ups of rocks, yet the team also turns it on the rover for selfies.

Perseverance landed in which crater, chosen for its ancient river delta?

Jezero crater once held a lake whose rivers built the delta, yet Perseverance surprised scientists by finding volcanic rock on the crater floor.

In 2025, NASA said a rock sampled by Perseverance, nicknamed Cheyava Falls, holds possible signs of what?

Ancient life could explain the rock's mineral spots and organic carbon, though scientists stress that non-living chemistry might make similar features.

Perseverance's MOXIE experiment produced what from the Martian atmosphere?

It made 5.37 grams in its first hour and 122 grams in total.

What message was hidden in the colour pattern of Perseverance's parachute?

Dare mighty things, a Theodore Roosevelt phrase, was hidden in binary code in the parachute's colour pattern, and internet sleuths cracked it.

Perseverance carried the first working examples of what to Mars?

Microphones let scientists hear Mars, and the recordings showed that sound travels slower there and would seem quieter and more muffled than on Earth.

After its test flights, NASA's Mars helicopter became Perseverance's what?

Aerial scout: it previewed terrain for Perseverance's scientists and drivers, going on to log 72 flights over nearly three years.

What was the Mars helicopter's nickname?

Its first flight, on 19 April 2021, was the first powered flight on another world.

How did NASA's Mars helicopter travel down to the Martian surface in 2021?

Under Perseverance's belly: weeks after landing, the rover dropped a debris shield, unfolded the helicopter onto the ground and drove away before its first flight.

What piece of history is attached to a cable under the Mars helicopter?

Wright Flyer wing fabric, a swatch the size of a postage stamp, rides under its solar panel, and a different piece of the same plane had flown aboard Apollo 11.

What ended the helicopter's mission in January 2024?

Broken rotor blades grounded it after a hard landing on flight 72, most likely because smooth sand ripples gave its navigation camera too few features to track.

The helicopter's final resting area was nicknamed after hills from which author's work?

J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world gave the Valinor Hills their name, and Perseverance later photographed the grounded helicopter there from about 450 m away.

What is the name of China's rover, which landed in May 2021?

Zhurong went into a planned hibernation in May 2022 and never woke up, and Chinese officials suspect too much dust on its solar panels is to blame.

China's rover is named after a mythological figure associated with what?

Fire: China's rover bears the name of a Chinese god of fire, fitting because Chinese tradition calls Mars the 'Planet of Fire' and pairs it with the element of fire.

China's rover landed in which region of Mars?

Viking 2 had landed in the same vast plain in 1976.

Why did the Soviet PrOP-M rovers of 1971 never explore Mars?

Their landers failed: Mars 2 crashed and Mars 3 fell silent soon after touching down, so neither tethered, ski-walking rover ever got to move.

Perseverance seals rock cores inside tubes in the hope that a future mission will do what with them?

Bring them to Earth: Perseverance even left 10 backup tubes on the ground at a depot called Three Forks in case the rover ran into problems.