Moon Rover
Reported March 2008
PITTSBURG, Pa. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Imagine an environment where temperatures fall well below negative 200 degrees. There's powdery ground, deep craters and large boulders -- and the journey is made in perpetual darkness. Now, roboticists are developing a prototype rover for NASA that could withstand the moon's brutal conditions -- and still provide it's human counterparts with lifesaving resources.
One part drill -- and all 500 pounds of it designed to operate under some very difficult conditions. Roboticists at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa. have developed this prototype lunar rover to search for life-sustaining compounds just under the moon's surface.
"Finding water-ice on the moon is important because it would provide a resource for water to drink … but you can also break up the H2O into hydrogen to use as fuel, and oxygen to breathe," says David Wettergreen, a roboticist at Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute.
"Scarab" is designed to drill about one meter into the lunar ground, and collect a core sample. It is also designed to lift up and avoid obstacles, like small boulders, on the moon's surface. The rover is equipped with sensors that direct it to shift positions as it drives on uneven surfaces to prevent a rollover.
On the moon, battery power and solar energy won't work … so the rover will run off radioisotopes, which present another challenge. "We have a source that generates about 100 watts, so about as much as a light bulb," says Wettergreen. "Imagine trying to run a robot that moves around and drills on as much power as a light bulb."
As a result, scarab moves very slowly -- about five inches a second. But the payload some day could make it 'the little moon rover that could.' Carnegie Mellon researchers say scarab itself will never travel to the moon -- it is just a prototype. But the next generation of moon rover may make a lunar trip.
The American Geophysical Union, the American Astronomical Society, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.
Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:
David Wettergreen, Ph.D.
Carnegie Mellon University, Robotics Institute
(412) 268-5421
dsw@ri.cmu.edu
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. IEEE-USA
Washington, DC 20036-5104
(202) 785-001
http://www.ieee.org
ieeeusa@ieee.org
American Geophysical Union
Washington, DC 20009-1277
1-800-966-2481
http://www.agu.org
American Astronomical Society
Washington, DC 20009-1231
(202) 328-2010
http://www.aas.org
aas@aas.org
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