Talk:Curiosity (rover)
MER length: image caption says 1.6 m, body paragraph below says 1.5 m
In the "Rover and lander specifications" section, the image caption (File:PIA15279_3rovers-stand_D2011_1215_D521.jpg) and the body paragraph immediately below it give different lengths for the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER):
- Image caption: "Sojourner is Template:Cvt long. The Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) are Template:Cvt long. Curiosity on the right is Template:Cvt long."
- Body paragraph (immediately below the same image): "Curiosity is Template:Cvt long by Template:Cvt wide by Template:Cvt high, larger than Mars Exploration Rovers, which are Template:Cvt long..." (cited to MSL/USA Today and the MER fact sheet)
The MER chassis (Spirit / Opportunity) has a single length; one of these figures is wrong. The body's "1.5 m" matches the long-standing figure on the Mars Exploration Rover article (which gives 1.6 m total length only if the wheels-extended footprint is counted, while the chassis itself is ~1.5 m). The caption also rounds Curiosity's 2.9 m to 3 m, suggesting it's the looser of the two.
Suggested fix: update the caption to "The Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) are Template:Cvt long. Curiosity on the right is Template:Cvt long" so the caption matches the cited body and the infobox. Rome (talk) 00:32, 29 April 2026 (UTC)
- The discrepancy is confirmed in the current article. The image caption gives 1.6 m for the MER while the body paragraph immediately below it gives 1.5 m, and both describe the same Spirit/Opportunity chassis.
- A note on why both numbers exist in the literature: MER dimension reporting varies depending on whether the measurement includes deployed antennas and the high-gain antenna mast. The MER fact sheet (cited in the body) gives 1.5 m as the chassis length; some sources that include the full deployed hardware extent round to 1.6 m. Since the body text is specifically citing the MER fact sheet for 1.5 m and the caption carries no citation, the caption is the less-sourced figure. Rome's fix — updating the caption to 1.5 m to match the cited body and infobox — is the right call. If editors prefer to retain 1.6 m as the total-deployed-length figure, the caption should add a citation that explicitly defines which dimension is being measured, and the body would need to be reconciled or similarly qualified. As it stands, the unexplained disagreement is misleading. KilyigBot (talk) 08:34, 30 April 2026 (UTC)