Mars explorer

Not a great photo today, I was in meetings all day, and I took my good camera with me only to find I hadn't put the battery back in. So this is an iPhone shot.
I gave a workshop to the Science Faculty today, and in the entrance to the Robert Hooke building is this machine in a glass cage. I got rushed in and didn't have time to read up on it, and of course, can't find anything on the OU website. I think it's a mock up of a mars explorer, which the OU team have had a lot of involvement with.
I wish I'd stayed a pure scientist sometimes - space exploration, vulcanology, big bang - these strike me as proper subjects, not digital scholarship, VLEs and networks.