HOW DO THEY COMPENSATE IN THE TEST BED AT JPL FOR THE .38 GRAVITY ON MARS?
There are two vehicles they can use for testing: SSTB1 (Tee-Bee) a full size replica of the MER vehicles, minor some minor differences (no solar panels, some temperature probes are missing…) which of course has the same mass as MER and higher weight on Earth than MER has on Mars; and SSTB Lite, a stripped down vehicle with same wheel size, actuators and suspension system, same WEB size but major components like the IDD and others are missing. This vehicle has a weight on Earth that is similar to the weight of MER on Mars. For Purgatory and for this event they are going to use the SSTB1, not the SSTB Lite. During Purgatory testing it was found that the SSTB1 behaved more similarly to the MER vehicles, possibly because both the SSTB1 and the soil were subject to the same gravity vector.
