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Working in the dark. A prototype Mars rover in a simulated Mars cave is controlled by British astronaut Major Tim Peake at the Airbus Defence and Space company in Stevenage.
Working in the dark. A prototype Mars rover in a simulated Mars cave is controlled by British astronaut Major Tim Peake at the Airbus Defence and Space company in Stevenage. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images
Working in the dark. A prototype Mars rover in a simulated Mars cave is controlled by British astronaut Major Tim Peake at the Airbus Defence and Space company in Stevenage. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images

Tim Peake takes Mars rover for a test drive in Stevenage

This article is more than 7 years old

Having run a marathon in space, what’s next for Tim Peake? A test drive on Mars (well, a Stevenage aircraft hangar decked out to resemble the red planet)

The Airbus Stevenage Mars Yard is an impressive place, complete with sand, rocks, uneven surfaces and a mural representing the Martian horizon. The lights are low in the aircraft hanger, as if it is dusk on the Red Planet.

Two robotic rovers sit silently in the artificial twilight. One of them, known as Bridget, is waiting for the test to begin.

On board the International Space Station (ISS), British ESA astronaut Tim Peake is being briefed on his mission. He’s been given a single sheet of A4 paper that tells him how to drive Bridget through his laptop, and a 10 minute briefing.

British astronaut Tim Peake on board the ISS in space, controlling a prototype rover in Stevenage on 29 April 2016. Photograph: ESA/HANDOUT/EPA

He’s been told that he will be driving in darkness, as if the rover is in a cave, and he will be looking for rocks that have each been painted with a florescent cross. These represent his targets, he has to find at least three of them in 90 minutes. Just to make life even more difficult, there will be seconds of delay on his commands reaching the rover.

Airbus have pioneered the building of Mars rovers in the UK and Europe. They have been rewarded with the contract from the European Space Agency for designing and build the ExoMars rover for ESA’s 2018 mission that will go to Mars to look for the evidence of life there.

As we wait inside the Mars Yard, behind a barrier to keep us off the sand, we are told that no more light from phones or cameras are allowed. The experiment is due to start. This is a moment of realisation for me. This is an experiment not a demonstration; the first time such an ambition test has been planned.

Last week, a simpler experiment to control a rover in a lab at ESA’s facility in the Netherlands did not go well. Now, it is all or nothing. This it is as real as it gets – apart from actually going to Mars itself.

Without warning, Bridget comes to life. The camera begins to look around and we’re off. It’s a snail’s pace and a rear wheel is making a grating noise on a rock that sounds like something you’d hear at the dentist, but we’re off.

There are inscrutable faces behind the panoramic sound-proofed glass of the control centre that looks out over the yard.

As the rover creeps towards the mock-up cave’s entrance, the lights come on and the camera pans first one way then the other. I look up from my note-taking and I see that Bridget is looking straight at me, I resist the urge to give Tim a cheesy thumbs-up. But it was so tempting.

Once in the “cave”, Peake can see very little. Computer monitors show us him working on the space station, and the camera feed from the rover that he is working to. He has no idea what is in the cave and must inch his way around looking for the targets.

Everything goes well. He finds three targets in relatively short order but then towards the end of the mission, there is a glitch. He has accidentally driven Bridget up onto a rock. “That’s what you get for hiring a helicopter pilot,” quips one of the audience.

British astronaut Major Tim Peake accidently drives the Mars rover over a rock during a simulated exploration of the Red Planet on 29 April 2016, in Stevenage. Photograph: Stuart Clark/Across the Universe

After a five-minute break during which the ISS sped from one communications window to another, the process begins again. But the glitches continue. It is software this time: Peake reports that it has frozen, which requires a reboot.

Then everything is normal again. He’s driven off the rock, checked that the software is returning accurate positions for the rover, and all is smooth. Listening to the voice loop from the control room, you’d never have guessed that anything had gone awry.

On a real mission, this could have been a serious situation with hundreds of millions of pounds at stake. Here, it is just something that was resolved and learnt from. A chance to do things better, and to prepare for the future. And that was when it really hit me.

One day this will not be a test site in Stevenage, it will be for real on Mars. This is a beginning of something amazing, and I look forward to that future.

Stuart Clark is the author of The Unknown Universe (Head of Zeus), and co-host of the podcast The Stuniverse (Bingo Productions). He is teaching the Guardian Masterclass ‘Understand the universe in an evening’ on 23 May.

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