On February 18, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance Rover will land on the Red Planet with instruments that can reveal traces of past lives. Ten days before arrival, spirits begin to warm up: it is not easy to land on Mars and only 40% of the machines launched towards this destination have arrived safely. This shows the difficulty of the task. But like NASA, we keep our fingers crossed and be optimistic. Optimism is also the chosen name for the twin rover of Perseverance, which will reproduce on Earth, with the machine’s most important maneuver. Placed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, it is fully operational.

Optimism, almost identical twins

Optimism Rover (“Operational Personality Twin for Integration of Mechanisms and Instruments to Mars”) is similar to its counterpart sent to Mars. Its size is the same location system, it travels at the same speed (0.15 km / h) and is equipped with the same equipment and software. However, as it develops on Earth, it has some adaptations: its wheels are stronger to support the Earth’s gravity. Instead of having a heating system to withstand cold Martian nights, a cooling system was installed to cope with California’s hot summer days. Finally, if the fixture is powered by a radiosotope thermoelectric generator, the optimism is connected via an “umbilical cord”, which also has an Ethernet cable, which allows engineering data without having to pass all commands and go through the system. Makes it possible to achieve.