New Mars Rover Makes the First Move

[Guest]

One small trip for Curiosity, one more leap for the Mars Exploration program.

New Mars Rover Makes the First Move : Read more

 

[chickenhoagie]

[citation][nom]ct1615[/nom]as long as they don't give it an iphone4 to call NASA back and send pics....[/citation]
Oh god, theres gotta be an app for analyzing space rocks..

 

[nicodemus_mm]

Maybe they should rename it... You know what it does to cats.

 

[matt87_50]

"safe confines of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory"

that doesn't sound very safe...

 

[Assmar]

Damned robots taking human jobs.

But seriously this is brilliant and I love it. My friend and I were talking about when Spirit and Opportunity first starting sending back images. It was just nice being able to live through that, not quite like the first manned moon landing, but still the images are forever ingrained in my brain.

 

[Zerk]

LOL!

If there Are any Aliens they will Freak out and Run away when they See that!

Scare the poor Guys into Space! LOL!

 

[athreex]

this droid does

 

[virustwin]

[citation][nom]ct1615[/nom]as long as they don't give it an iphone4 to call NASA back and send pics....[/citation]
LOL

 

[lauxenburg]

More money on this garbage....honestly, if the world is going to end, we're not going to make it anywhere, so just freak it NASA.

It doesn't matter. Really...

 

[Shadow703793]

[citation][nom]ct1615[/nom]as long as they don't give it an iphone4 to call NASA back and send pics....[/citation]
I don't think the robot can hold the iPhone 4 correctly.....
:lol:

 

[geofry]

Make sure you double check your math guys. We don't want another standard/metric conversion error for this trip. Ok.

 

[tntom]

The picture had me confused at first. At first glance it looked like a a robot had puked up its guts onto a table.

 

[Guest]

" More money on this garbage....honestly, if the world is going to end, we're not going to make it anywhere, so just freak it NASA.

It doesn't matter. Really... "

Oh yeah end of the world blah blah blah, well why you care about the money spent then? let's spend even more...

 

[Guest]

NASA is a joke now! They should be farming this out to research teams with a prize attached. Seriously, I'm not a NASA hater but the last time they went to the moon was 1972! They are moving way too slow and pushing out this research to private research teams would save huge dollars if they just awarded a prize instead of a direct government contract. Look at DARPA and the X-Prize successes. I'm not so naive to believe that building lunar rovers is easy, but we went from nothing to landing on the moon in the 50's and 60's yet we can't even make a Lunar rover inside of a year now? If these problems aren't sorted out soon the USA will become a secondary player in the space research category behind developing nations such as China and India.

 

[theroguex]

Programmed, robotic, automated rovers designed to be utilized on MARS are 10x different than the manned rovers we drove around on the moon.

 

[jodrummersh]

[citation][nom]matt87_50[/nom]"safe confines of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory"that doesn't sound very safe...[/citation]

Ha! I've actually worked at JPL and had a tour of the Rover test building. They had a Rover half buried in "Mars dust" simulating the stuck one on Mars, trying to figure out how to unstick it. I believe they also make the CCD sensor for the Hubble at JPL

 

[razor512]

Hopefully this time nasa remembers to add wipers for the solar panels so when a dust storm happens they don't have to wait 2 months for the wind to blow enough dust off in order to charge the batteries.

 

[Boslink]

Uneducated and dumb by TV.

Do some research BEFORE you post something.

There is NO solar panels on that rover.

 

[Assmar]

[citation][nom]bnajbert[/nom]NASA is a joke now! They should be farming this out to research teams with a prize attached. Seriously, I'm not a NASA hater but the last time they went to the moon was 1972! They are moving way too slow and pushing out this research to private research teams would save huge dollars if they just awarded a prize instead of a direct government contract. Look at DARPA and the X-Prize successes. I'm not so naive to believe that building lunar rovers is easy, but we went from nothing to landing on the moon in the 50's and 60's yet we can't even make a Lunar rover inside of a year now? If these problems aren't sorted out soon the USA will become a secondary player in the space research category behind developing nations such as China and India.[/citation]
I'm sorry, I thought this article was about a MARS rover, although I'm certain parts can be used if they were to make one for the Moon, but a complete redesign would be required as conditions on the two celestial objects are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

But seriously, who cares about the moon right now, (we can get back there any time we want) when we just learned so much from the Clinton/Bush/NASA Mars projects Spirit and Opportunity? I don't believe private agencies can compete with NASA in that area, but they can more than compete with respect to the Moon. NASA can continue their very successful forays to Martian soil because no one can do it better, and no one has, let alone twice like we have, and here comes the third.

And I think private and public dollars are needed for us to compete. Oh, and I LOVE the NASA HD podcasts I get on Miro. You guys might want to check them out.

 

[eddieroolz]

I wish continued success for the project.