A big tip of the hat to the team that built the Opportunity rover. Their little space robot was only supposed to survive for 90 days but here is it 9 yearslater and it is still going strong. If I weren’t so impressed I’d be terrified by the though of unstoppable space robots.
Prints available for $20 and up here: http://society6.com/AndyKelly/Creative-History—January-25-2004
Quite glad these spike-covered robots are being sent far away to Mars where they can’t harm humankind.
The Mars Curiosity rover meets the facehugger in “Cool Things to Find” a video by Cinesaurus.
Yet another sign that humankind’s time on this Earth is rapidly drawing to a close: TIME has nominated the Curiosity rover to be its “person” of the year!
Preparing now for an invasion by atomic-powered robots from Mars.
One-ton, atomic powered robot on Mars turns out to also be a bit of a litterbug.
Mars Rover Curiosity to Become Autonomous in 2013
NASA’s Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science (AEGIS) software, which has been on board the Mars rover Opportunity for almost three years, will help Curiosity zoom in on features that Earth-based scientists want to see. It will use an automated image-capture process to photograph rocks meeting certain criteria, and then zoom in on them for further study. Scientists can program it to say “if you see this, do this,” which will make it easier to focus on interesting targets. NASA won’t have to go through the arduous process of checking the rover’s images for interesting features, and then telling it to proceed. (via New Brain Upgrade To Let Mars Rover Curiosity Decide For Itself Which Rocks To Zap | Popular Science)
Mars, you’ve been robopocalypsed!
Turning a 90-day mission into an eight-year odyssey? Yeah, I’d say that was worthy of some recognition.
Robots do make quite a mess when they land on alien planets.
(via NASA/JPL)
