MER 2003/Athena Update Week Ending December 7, 2002

This week it’s been all about preparation for one of the biggest
tests we have in front of us before we launch.

The motto you try to follow in this business is “test as you fly, fly
as you test”. In other words, test everything on the ground just like
you plan to fly it, and then fly it that way. Coming up over the next
couple of weeks is one of the most important test-’em-like-we’ll-fly-
’em events of the whole MER program. It’s called the “surface thermal
vacuum test”. In this test we take the whole MER-2 rover, put it into
a big space simulation chamber, take the atmosphere down to martian
pressure, and take the temperature down to martian temperature. And
then we make the rover do just about everything it knows how to do.
We can’t drive it, because there isn’t enough room in the chamber.
But we do everything else, and that’s a lot. Every instrument gets
tested under conditions just like we’ll experience on Mars.

To tell the truth, you’d have to be nuts not to feel just a little
nervous before a test as important and complicated as this one. But
we’ve been preparing for months, and we think we’re ready. We’ll find
out soon.