Space Penguin Could Hop Around The Moon

notdanielp writes "A robotic Lunar Penguin explorer could be hopping around on the moon by 2009, said Raytheon on Tuesday, as it unveiled the concept lander at an aerospace conference. The unmanned lunar device, in development for two years, is 3 feet tall and weighs approximately 230 pounds. It "hops" by reigniting small propulsion engines ... President Bush last year refocused the space program on sending people to the moon, Mars and beyond. Raytheon said the Penguin could be a robotic precursor to future manned space missions and that it was being proposed to NASA."

Comments

Russian rovers still hold traverse record

[peter303]

Despite the NASAs great results with their three successful Mars rovers, the two Russian Lunokhods still hold the distance records covering about 30 miles together, or an order of magnitude more than the Martian rovers. The Moon is near enough to allow interactive control of surface robots, unlike Mars.

Of course many of us would like to see dozens of rovers crawling all over the planets and moons. The cost of the International Space Station would have funded over 200 rovers.

Re:ill avoid the linux jokes...

[Red Flayer]

Please RTFA.

It's only called the Penguin because it was originally designed to explore the south pole of the moon to search for ice.

Penguins are native only to the Antarctic region (near the South Pole) here on Earth.

I don't know where they are native to on other planets.