Question: How long did it take to build the first European Mars Rover?

Abbie Hutty answered on 13 Mar 2016:

Well I’ve been working on it for nearly 4 years, and I probably have another 6 months to a year left before my bit is finished? But that isn’t the end of the whole thing as I do the structure – which basically has to be finished first so that everyone else can bolt their stuff onto it. So other people will carry on working on it right up to when it launces in 2018. But this is a very long project as it’s so new and different from anything we’ve done before so we’ve had to start from scratch and really develop new materials and techniques and tests and things to make sure it will work.

Normally our science missions might be 3-5 years long, and our telecommunication satellites, like the ones you get your sky TV through, are much easier as we’ve done lots of similar ones before, so we can do them in 18 months!