Maybe it’s been the exciting, messiah-like death-and-rebirth of China’s lunar rover
On January 4, 2004, the first of two identical robotic exploratory rovers, NASA’s Spirit, snapped this stunning 360 degree image of its surroundings, moments after setting down on Mars. In the years to follow, both Spirit and its sister Opportunity helped revolutionize our understanding of the Red Planet.
When NASA’s Opportunity rover launched on July 7th, 2003, expectations were modest. It would spend 90 Martian days exploring soil and rock samples and taking panoramas of the Red Planet; anything else would be a bonus. Nearly ten years after its initial shift was up, Opportunity is still going strong.
After spending roughly $2.5 billion to build the Curiosity rover and deliver it to Mars, there’s no way NASA would let something as trivial as a mechanical breakdown or software glitch stop its journey—not when we could just send up a repair-bot to fix it. Nicolas Hommel and Matthieu Findinier produced this bubbly animated short positing what it would take to get the mechanical Magellan of Mars back on its feet, er wheels. More »
Moving people and supplies across the Great White South is treacherous, difficult, and expensive with logistical costs constituting as much as 90 percent of an expedition’s budget—about $125,000 a trip on average. And that’s assuming the convoy isn’t swallowed by an ice crevasse en route. But a new radar-equipped rover could help the National Science Foundation save lives and millions of dollars a year. More »
To build and supply a lunar base, astronauts will need heavy-duty space trucks for transporting gear. There’s just one problem: no roads. That’s why NASA engineers designed the rover they call ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer)-to handle any terrain, whether dusty, rocky, or crater-y. More »
NASA’s Curiosity rover finds ancient streambed on Mars, evidence of ‘vigorous’ water flow
Posted in: Today's ChiliCuriosity may have spent a while limbering up for the mission ahead, but now it’s found evidence of an ancient streambed on Mars that once had “vigorous” water flow. Photos of two rock outcroppings taken by the rover’s mast camera between the north rim of Gale Crater and the foot of Mount Sharp reveal gravel embedded into a layer of conglomerate rock. The shape of the small stones indicate to NASA JPL scientists that they were previously moved, and their size (think from grains of sand to golf balls) are a telltale sign that water did the work instead of wind. Evidence of H2O on Mars has been spotted before, but this is the first direct look at the composition of riverbeds NASA has observed from above.
According to Curiosity science co-investigator William Dietrich, it’s estimated that water flowed at the site anywhere from thousands to millions of years ago, moved at a clip of roughly 3 feet per second and was somewhere between ankle and hip deep. “A long-flowing stream can be a habitable environment,” Mars Science Laboratory Project Scientist John Grotzinger said. “It is not our top choice as an environment for preservation of organics, though. We’re still going to Mount Sharp, but this is insurance that we have already found our first potentially habitable environment.”
NASA’s Curiosity rover finds ancient streambed on Mars, evidence of ‘vigorous’ water flow originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Sep 2012 02:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink Computer World, CNN |
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By far the greatest challenge for robots with legs is staying upright when the going gets rough. A team at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kod*lab has a hunch that we don’t need extra smarts to make that happen — just an extra appendage. The upgraded X-RHex Lite (XRL) carries a tail that will swing in the right direction to keep the robot upright if it’s caught out by a fall, much like a cat. That’s impressive for a nearly 18-pound robot (the previous Tailbot was 0.4 pounds), but we’re pretty sure no feline has six springy legs; the XRL can crash to the ground and still get back up like it ain’t no thing, which gives it a fudge factor others don’t have. We don’t know if the hexapod critter will lead to more than further experiments. If there are fewer stuck rovers on future exploration missions, though, we’ll know who to thank.
Continue reading X-RHex Lite robot grows a tail, always lands on its feet (video)
X-RHex Lite robot grows a tail, always lands on its feet (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Jul 2012 22:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink IEEE Spectrum |
University of Pennsylvania | Email this | Comments