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Meet the Very First Rover To Land On Mars

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-may-call-him-todd dept.

toygeek writes "Before Curiosity, before Opportunity, before Spirit, and before Sojourner, the very first robot to land on Mars was this little guy, way back in December of 1971. Called PrOP-M, the rover was part of the Soviet Union's Mars-3 mission, which had the potential to deploy the first ever mobile scientific instruments onto the Martian surface. Article also contains Russian video on early rovers."

1 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. What incredible workmanship by macraig · · Score: 0, Troll

    Boy, the Soviet space program really operated on a shoestring and with limited underpaid talent, didn't it? My grandfather could have made that thing in his little machine shop at the back of their quarter-acre property. Actually, he would have produced something that looked and functioned far better than this clunky little thing (the U.S. military got a lot of WWII machined parts from him). Good grief, the cuts in the plates look jagged or uneven and I could swear some welds are visible. It looks like a hobbyist project. So I guess the Soviet space program was just a hobby for the Politburo....