HOW CAN THEY BE SURE THAT THE SIMULATIONS IN THE TEST BED WILL ACCURATE?
They try to reduce the variables as much as they can. Although the soil under the right side is different from the soil under the left side of the rover, they have a soil compound that can reproduce the two soil mechanical behaviors depending on how the simulant is tamped down, and this can be reproduced consistently. Since the soil is all the same there is no need to keep two different soil simulants separated. The sandbox is in an air-conditioned area and the rover will be placed in the same configuration each time in the 8’x12’x2′ box set at about 12 deg roll. They don’t know how accurate the testbed simulation will be. One thing that can be done is to issue the same commands that were executed on Mars and compare the testbed results with the data from Mars. Moreover, what the testbed will be used for is a differential study. They just need to compare the different extrication strategies that have been through of and find out the best one. They do not need 100% accuracy, just enough
