So I now have in my posession both of the Mars-related Lego kits. Specifically, the Mars Rover kit and the Mission to Mars kit. The latter is composed of three main components: a model of the Mars Odyssey satellite, a small model of the MER, and and a Delta II ELV and associated launch tower. The satellite model is so simple that it is somewhat worthless... without the stickers for the solar panels and base plate, it probably wouldn't be recognizeable. The small rover is cute... it has working suspension, though not authentic MER rocker-bogey style. The Delta rocket is probably the best part of the kit. It looks pretty good aside from its 8 boosters instead of 9, and the strange gap in the body tube near the fuel hose.

The Rover kit is more of a Technics kit than an attempt at a scale model. It was designed to have a lot of interactive moving parts to play with. However, these come at the expense of realism. For instance, the rocker-bogey is missing again so that they could include steering. The sensor mast is far too short for the scale of the model. When you fold up the (translucent??) solar panels, the model looks very wrong. I had to add several extra rubberbands to the joints to get the solar panels to unfold automatically as they were designed to do.

All this bitching aside, however, the Mars Rover is a technical masterpiece. The moving parts are really ingeneous and it incorporates a lot of functionality into a relatively small frame. In the end, even if it doesn't really look exactly like a MER, it still looks pretty sweet on my desk at work and all my co-workers want to play with it.

So my thanks to the Planetary Society for the Legos.