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Tumbleweed Rover for Marathon Martian Journeys

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the dust-in-the-wind dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A prototype Mars rover, the Tumbleweed, has completed its 40 mile trek across the Antarctic, driven only by winds even in rough terrain over eight days. While the current rovers are designed for flat, equatorial regions, the tumbleweed design is geared to cover longer distances across what many consider the more interesting and dangerous polar regions on Mars."

1 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Hold on a second... by Entropius · · Score: 3, Redundant

    Isn't the atmosphere of Mars only a few percent as dense as Earth's atmosphere?

    Doesn't seem like the swooshing of the diffuse Martian atmosphere would provide enough force to shove even a highly-engineered tumbleweed around...