Posted by tourdemars to Mars Science Laboratory at January 5, 2005 12:15 PM

While those unflappable interplanetary twins – Spirit and Opportunity – continue to trudge across Mars, engineers and scientists are readying the next robotic rover destined to trail across the distant sands of the red planet. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is bigger, heavier, and more powerful than the machinery now at work on Mars. As the next robot to go mobile on Mars, building, testing, and then flying MSL has its challenges. That being said, and while now a solo mission, there is already talk that MSL may follow in the wheel tracks of Spirit and Opportunity – that is, doubling up on Mars.