Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Robotic Arm

At the front of NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is a seven-foot (2.1 meter) long, five-degree-of-freedom robotic arm designed and built by Motiv Space Systems. The arm’s turret carries the rover’s most critical science instruments, including SHERLOC, WATSON, PIXL, the Gaseous Dust Removal Tool (GDRT), a Ground Contact Sensor, and the coring drill. Key capabilities include a 45kg payload capacity (Earth gravity), 2.1 meter reach, sub-millimeter accuracy, and operation down to -135C in Martian dust and radiation. The arm drills Martian rocks for core sample collection, enables science instruments to image and analyze the elemental composition of Mars, and handles samples for stowage in the rover chassis. Motiv also custom-engineered a six-degree-of-freedom force-torque sensor for the arm that operates at -135C to provide contact dynamics information during sample collection.