Mars rover Mars rover A Mars rover is a motor vehicle that propels itself across the surface of the planet Mars upon arrival. Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, and they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny positions to weather winter months, and they can advance the knowledge of how to perform very remote robotic vehicle control. There have been four successful robotically operated Mars rovers. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory managed the "Sojourner" rover, the "Opportunity" rover, "Spirit" rover, and, now the "Curiosity" rover. On January 24, 2016 NASA reported that
Crewed Mars rover rovers, because they need to know at least roughly where they are and where they are going to get to a destination. Dead reckoning was the method used by the Mars Pathfinder rover "Sojourner" for navigation. A GPS satellite network for Mars would mean a constellation of satellites in Mars orbit, but one alternative would be a surface based pseudo-satellites array. These devices would have to be emplaced with high precision, unless they were self-calibrating. An example of criteria for humaned Mars surface rover was expressed by NASA in the surface variant of the aforementioned SEV, in development in during