Rovers in Mars Yard

Prototype planetary lander and rover designs in place on simulated Red Planet terrain. Nicknamed the Mars Yard, it is used to test robotic devices on a planetary surface.

The 8 x 8 m terrain ‘sandbox’, filled with different sizes of sand, gravel and rock, is part of the Planetary Robotics Laboratory at ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.