Spirit, the poor Mars Rover that’s been stuck in Martian sand since last year, has actually contributed to a pretty fantastic discovery in its sedentary months: the evidence of subsurface water on Mars.
This contraption looks like it’d fall apart trundling over a particularly rough bit of carpeting, but it’s actually much more durable than it seems. It’s Lunokhod 1 and the Soviets drove it around the moon in 1970.
NASA’s Mars Spirit Rover, now a stationary probe stuck in the sands of the Red Planet, may not survive the Martian Winter.
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The next Mars rover, dubbed Curiosity, is due to launch next spring and land on the red planet in August of 2012. But just today, it took its very first steps in a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Avatar put me to sleep, but I admire James Cameron’s thirst for new film technologies. Now I admire him even more after he convinced NASA Administrator Charles Bolden to put back the 3D camera in Curiosity, the next Mars rover.
Martian rovers with wheels are so 2009, man. And they get stuck in the sand way to easily. What we need is an army of tumbleweed beach ball robots surveying hundreds of miles of Martian surface. NASA’s on the case.
