Mars on Earth
A little corner of ESA’s technical heart that is forever Mars: this rubble-strewn model of the Red Planet is used to put prototype planetary rovers through their paces. Officially known as the Automation & Planetary Robotics Lab, its nickname is the ‘Mars Yard’.
Dutch students explore this alien environment in the photo shown here, part of a series taken by image gallery TechniekBeeldbank.nu. The site offers the media positive images of engineering to appeal to young people.
![Prototype rover in Mars Yard](/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2013/07/prototype_rover_in_mars_yard/12928181-1-eng-GB/Prototype_rover_in_Mars_Yard_article.jpg)
The Mars Yard is housed in ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, in the Agency’s Automation & Robotics Section.
An 8 x 8 m square filled with sand and different sizes of gravel and rocks, the Mars Yard offers a small crater, a boulder field, a sandy dune and a gravel slope area.
![Motion tracking system](/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2013/07/mars_yard_motion_tracking_system/12928432-1-eng-GB/Mars_Yard_motion_tracking_system_article.jpg)
This martian testbed serves to assess rover locomotion and navigation as well as the positioning of robotic arms – then check how all these elements operate together in practice, as integration is a major challenge in space robotic systems.
Specialised equipment for precisely recording the robots' performance includes motion-tracking infrared cameras.