Nasa Robot To Begin Search For Martians

[Turborama]

Source: Sky News

11:26pm UK, Friday November 25, 2011

The most sophisticated robot explorer ever built is set to begin a 350 million mile journey to Mars.

The car-sized buggy will roam the planet's surface looking for signs that the environment could once have supported life - and may still do.

The Curiosity rover has 10 instruments, including a laser, a drill and even a magnifying glass. It will survey the landscape for promising rock formations and sediments, and then analyse their mineral content in an on-board laboratory .

Wanda Harding, mission manager for US space agency NASA, said: "The rover is essentially like a geologist in a self-contained laboratory. The capabilities that exist are probably the next best thing to sending a human to do the same job."

Read more: http://news.sky.com/home/technology/article/16118050

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NASA will be streaming a live feed of the launch http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/">here starting at 7:30 a.m. PST tomorrow. (The embedded link also takes you to a really cool site with a countdown clock and a lot more info.)

Meet Curiosity, NASA's New $2.5 Billion Mars Rover: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/11/meet-curiosity-nasas-new-25-billion-mars-rover/45403/

[aSpeckofDust]

1. Awesome, I enjoyed following the last mars rover. also I like that they didn't tint the picture red.

even if it is just a computer generated image. People still think Mars is quite literally red. :|

[Renew Deal]

5. The last mars rover made some important discoveries

I'll never forget this one.

[kickysnana]

2. Now that Grovelbot's duties are over perhaps he would be a good translator. n/t

[jdadd]

3. How about this guy

[meow2u3]

6. Or this guy?

[Renew Deal]

4. If humans can explore Mars, can't martians explore earth?

:shrug:

[lunatica]

7. Haven't you heard of the Martian anal probes?

It's been going on for generations! Where have you been?

[Baclava]

8. the only way they'll find life on Mars is if we send up sex robots and...

...they find a way to replicate.

I, for one, salute our robotic brothers and sisters in their exploration of space.



Engineer Aleksey Bitulev told RT that the heart of the device is a tiny tube that produces neutrons capable of penetrating up to one meter below the planet’s surface.

What looks like an ordinary case conceals the Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons, or simply DAN to its friends. It weighs no more than two packs of sugar and may be not much to look at, but it is in fact an impressive piece of high-tech hardware

“The rover is like a small car, and our device is placed on it like headlights,” Mitrofanov explained. “So as the pulsing neutron generator shoots, neutrons go under the ground, and feel their way under. If liquid or frozen water is there, it can then be measured with our detector.”



And the Rover comes fully-loaded: 17 high-definition cameras, aluminium wheels that can be steered independently, a mounted laser to vaporize rock and a robotic arm to drill and scoop up samples, among other instruments. Under the hood: a nuclear-powered engine to give it a top crawling speed of five centimeters per second.

http://rt.com/news/mars-russian-detector-water-287/