This article was originally published on July 9, 2012.
- A solar powered robot with six wheels and standing 1.5m high and 2.3m wide and weighs 180kg.
- Rover can be steered at front and rear letting it to tilt up to 30 degrees.
- Maximum speed is 2 in/s (i.e) 50 mm/s.
- Solar panels generate 140 watts up to 4 hours per Martian day.
- Rechargeable lithium ion batteries stores energy to use at night.
- On-board computer with 20 MHz RAD6000 CPU with 128 MB of DRAM, 3 MB of EEPROM, and 256 MB of flash memory.
- Operating temperatures ranges from −40 °C to +40 °C (−40 °F to 104 °F).
- Radioisotope heaters and electric heaters provides adequate heating for the rover.
- Insulated by gold film and silica aerogel.
- Omnidirectional low gain antenna and a steerable high gain antenna both in direct contact with Earth.
- Panoramic camera tests the texture, color, mineralogy, and structure of the local terrain.
- Navigation Camera with a higher field of view but lower resolution is used for navigation and driving.
- Two B&W camera with 120 degree field of view.
- Cameras produce 1024-pixel by 1024-pixel images and are compressed, stored and transmitted at required time.
- Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer is used to identify the type of soil and rock and studies the processes of their formation.
- Mössbauer spectrometer examines the iron bearing rocks and soils.
- Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer tests the amount of elements present in rocks and soils.
- Magnets to collect magnetic dust particles.
- Microscopic imager to provide high resolution image on soils.
- Rock Abrasion Tool is used to provide new specimen to be tested by instruments on-board.