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Two New Mars Rovers Will Be Launched In June

Posted by timothy on from the a-roving dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "ABC News is running a story which talks about the next two rovers to explore Mars which will be launched in June of this year. NASA is borrowing some things from the Pathfinder mission to help insure a success as well as doing extensive testing which was apparently not done for the Mars Polar Lander. From the article: 'The two new rovers, which are about the size of a golf cart, will have more power and greater mobility than the Pathfinder's Sojourner rover. Both should be able to trek up to 44 yards across the surface every Martian day (24 Earth hours and 37 Earth minutes).'"

4 of 32 comments (clear)

  1. Oh No! by SN74S181 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This will become a high profile project. So it won't be at all the skunkworks project that the earlier rover was.

    It'll be full of egos, and every department of NASA will want to be involved.

    We'll be lucky if it even lands on Mars.

  2. Argh by Bob+Vila's+Hammer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    After reading the article, I again became frustrated after finding that the length of these rover's operational lives seems to be limited only by the amount of dust collecting on its solar cells. These new rovers were supposedly built upon designs and characteristics of the old Sojourner model operated in 1997. Why wouldn't they improve upon this restricted system and incorporate something to prevent the dust from covering its energy supply?

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    --"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
  3. This time around... by kescom · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...the images you see should be true-color, too.

    A large majority of publicy-available Mars images--particularly maps taken from orbit by Mars Odyssey and most of the Sojourner images--are not really color-calibrated at all. Mars is actually a lot redder than you think, and you really can't see clouds at all.

    Here at Cornell, we're working on properly calibrating the images for the new missions. With some luck, everything that's publicly released next year will be sRGB! (Check out progress.)

  4. Re:Golf cart? by barakn · · Score: 3, Informative

    Your link has an extraneous space in it. Here's the functioning version: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/spacecraft/hi res/roverteam.jpg

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    "I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show