Quote Originally Posted by Harrison View Post
That's correct. It has a core drill that can go 2m into the ground to collect samples. It's also got an advanced lab built in to test and analyse the samples, but once it's finished with them they will be packaged and dropped off.

A later vehicle will be sent to Mars to retrieve them to bring back.

The rover also has a lot of other equipment onboard including 20 high res cameras and for the first time microphoes to send back audio from the surface.

This rover is also massive compared to previous ones. Weighing 1 ton and made of Aluminium, it's taller then a person and as large as a big car. It also has far longer daily range of 200m, which might not sound much, but this is being charged from solar panels each day. Previous rovers could only move about 10m a day.
Not quite a Big car H, more like the weight of a small compact car.

But what really excites me about this....
Homo Sapien now have a piece of their Technology on it, 249.91 million km away from where it was manufactured. - All we gotta do is cut down the Travel time to days instead of months, which is currently six to eight depending on the time of Orbit.

Do ya think we'll ever stop f'king up this lump of Rock called "Earth" before we ever get the chance to Terraform another Planet.