A Giant, Red Planet-Inspired Sandpit Will Test Europe's First Mars Rover

There’s a new mini-Mars on Earth, and it’s been made especially for robots. The indoor “Mars yard,” located in Stevenage in the UK, will act as a test ground for the ExoMars rover, Curiosity’s European cousin, and it looks pleasingly like you might imagine the Red Planet (unlike the vacuum chamber Mars simulation we saw earlier this week).

The 30m-long test site, which is essentially a giant sand pit filled with 300 tonnes of sand, mimics the planet’s surface so that ExoMars can practice navigating the terrain, which comes complete with a kind of rocky obstacle course. The facility is the result of efforts by the European Space Agency, the UK Space Agency, and international company Airbus Defence and Space.

Because it’s impossible to direct a rover on Mars in real time—the distance from Earth is just too far—it’s got to learn to reach a given destination by itself. ExoMars’ cameras and computers will act as the robot’s navigator, picking out routes that avoid potentially hazardous rocks and cracks in the surface.

ExoMars is Europe’s first Mars rover, built in a joint operation with Russia (NASA pulled out due to budget cuts), and it’s set to make the interplanetary journey in 2018. It will aim to search for traces of life, and investigate the planet’s environment and atmosphere. Thanks to a panoramic camera, it’s also expected to trump Curiosity’s photography skills. It’s specially designed to look at rock textures, for instance, which could give a clue to past (or maybe even present) life forms.

The prototype rover is still being tested and developed, which is where the new Mars yard comes in. But the BBC explains that the actual vehicle going to space won’t ever get to play in the terrestrial Marscape because of risk of contamination—as one of its main missions is to search for life, it could get confused by any specks of earthly materials it takes with it.

The ESA is currently trying to figure out exactly where on Mars to send the rover, which will be able to cover 70m a day once its on the surface. They released a long list of potential destinations this week, and are currently weighing up their options. As we’ve seen in the past, they’ll want to go where there’s most evidence of water, as water means a greater chance of life. But there are engineering constraints to take into account that don’t make it such an easy decision, especially as targeting a landing site isn’t an exact process.

Wherever it ends up, it’ll probably get a pretty good view of home.