Rover (space exploration)

A rover (or sometimes planetary rover) is a space exploration vehicle designed to move across the surface of a planet or other celestial body. Some rovers have been designed to transport members of a human spaceflight crew; others have been partially or fully autonomous robots. Rovers usually arrive at the planetary surface on a lander-style spacecraft. Rovers are created to land on another planet, besides Earth, to find out information and to take samples. They can collect dust, rocks, and even take pictures.

Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory and they can be directed to interesting features. If they are solar powered, they can place themselves in sunny positions to weather winter months. They can also advance the knowledge of how to perform very remote robotic vehicle control which is necessarily semi-autonomous due to the finite speed of light.

Their advantages over orbiting spacecraft are that they can make observations to a microscopic level and can conduct physical experimentation. Disadvantages of rovers compared to orbiters are the higher chance of failure, due to landing and other risks, and that they are limited to a small area around a landing site which itself is only approximately anticipated.

Rovers arrive on spacecraft and are used in conditions very distinct from those on the Earth, which makes some demands on their design.

Rovers have to withstand high levels of acceleration, high and low temperatures, pressure, dust, corrosion, cosmic rays, remaining functional without repair for a needed period of time.

Rovers are usually packed for placing in a spacecraft, because it has limited capacity, and has to be deployed. They are also attached to a spacecraft, so devices for removing these connections are installed.

...
Wikipedia