The vehicle is called the Sample Fetch Rover (SFR), Polish state news agency PAP reported.
A Polish company called PIAP Space is part of an international consortium, led by the UK’s Airbus, that has developed a test chassis for the SFR.
Financing for the project is provided by the European Space Agency (ESA).
The SFR rover’s key mission on Mars is scheduled for 2026.
According to the ESA, after reaching the Red Planet in a rocket, “the Sample Fetch Rover will navigate autonomously, detect tubes of samples collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover, pick them up and place them in a container on the NASA Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV).”
The MAV will then be intercepted by the ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter, which is due to land on Earth in 2031.
Polish contribution
Poland's PIAP Space was responsible for the executive design, production, technological modifications and initial tests of the SFR’s prototype chassis.
Important work was also carried out by Canada’s MDA and RUAG of Switzerland, the PAP news agency reported.
According to PIAP Space’s CEO Mateusz Wolski, the biggest challenge was to make the rover resistant to Mars surface conditions, including the planet's ubiquitous dust.
“All the mobile parts, engines and mechanisms must be hermetic because the Martian dust is 10 times smaller in diameter than the Earth’s sand - it enters everywhere,” Wolski told PAP.
PIAP Space has also submitted an offer to build the final chassis. “The contractor will be selected at a later date,” Wolski said.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, piap.space/pl, esa.int