>>3826382The radiation hardening is more for interplanetary space. Don't forget that the rover spent about half a year in deep space.
But yes, Mars is a hellscape. I say, let Elon go there and see how he likes it there.
Venus is much more hostile though. The extreme pressure and temperatures on the surface certainly make it completely pointless to send a rover.
Fun story - the USSR sent a bunch of probes to Venus, named Venera (Russian for Venus).
The probes used a tube camera which would transmit analogue images, as CCDs hadn't been invented yet.
In order to protect the cameras and their optics, they were fitted with lens caps that'd use a small explosive charge to eject the cap upon the probe landing. Unfortunately for the USSR, all the explosive charges failed, and the lens caps stayed on... except for one Venera mission when the explosive charge functioned and removed the lens cap from the camera, giving us the only images we have from the surface of Venus.
That same probe had a soil sampling arm, but unfortunately, the lens cap landed exactly where the arm would fall, and the USSR instead got a chemical breakdown of their lens cap.
Pic on the left is the said soil sampler sampling the lens cap.
