Mars – The NASA Rover’s Trek Across the Planet
Well it’s now started to move, Nasa’s curiousity rover has moved from it’s original landing site almost 400 metres across the planet. It is moving to a spot identified by the scientists who want to use the robots drill to collect rock samples. The feature is called Gleneig and it’s a spot on the surface where three different terrains cross each other.
Curiosity has actually been designed to move much further than this, in fact it is built to operate 20 kms from it’s landing spot. This gives it the potential to analyse and explore a much wider range of conditions that previous probes which were static. The travelling though is painfully slow and Gleineg will actually take several weeks to reach.
All the time Curiousity is travelling it is sending back high quality images using it’s Mastcam. These images are also used to help calculate the best route for the rover to follow. At the moment it is on the base of Mount Sharo and scientists are hoping to find evidence of the abundance of water one thought to have existed on the planet.
There are some great images coming over now and included in a documentary currently screening on the BBC and the Horizon programme. If you’re interested in Science at all it’s definitely worth checking out. If you are based outside the United Kingdom and want to check out this – you can find some information here – on Youtube. It demonstrates how you can configure your computer to use a proxy server to access some of the great British documentaries available online – all with no advert breaks !!
Ok forget advert breaks someone sent me an email about watching more British TV online and I found this – http://www.theninjaproxy.org/just-interesting/itvplayer/