Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: thedoc on 10/02/2014 21:30:02
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Space Boffins Sue Nelson and Richard Hollingham dodge a prototype Mars rover on location at Airbus Defence Space in Stevenage – where the future Exo Mars mission rover is going to be built. They’re joined by space engineer Abi Hutton and the Mr Future of advanced space concepts, Matthew Stuttard. There are also reports on Urthecast - the two new British-made cameras on the International Space Station - and the imminent launch of the crowd-funded spacecraft, KickSat.
Listen to this Show (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/astronomy/show/20140210-1/)
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If you want to discuss this show, or ask a question, this is the place to do it.
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Apparently a lot of countries are developing serious interests in space exploration. There is certainly great potential for financial rewards - mining tritium on the moon for nuclear fusion reactors, space tourism and even reality TV (from memory, one organization in France intends to be funded by a reality TV show to offer one way tickets to Mars that their Government is reluctant to finance!) Certainly, we are now fairly reliant on space-Earth communication satellites for GPS, some Internet communications, various scientific investigations and routine holiday trips to "real" lonely planets may be just a decade or two away ;)
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We are certainly not reliant on satellites for internet communications the vast majority of it travels by fibre optic cable.
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Hi syhprum - I apologize for a lazy exaggeration. However fiber optic cable is not available in all areas on the planet, and may not run between countries separated by sea. Satellite communications does seem quite sensible in bridging such gaps, and is certainly essential for other popular services such as GPS, and also used in scientific experiments ascertaining various aspects of relativity theory - for example time dilation with surface height.
However from thedoc's original post with an interesting mp3 file-link on Mars exploration, miniature satellites etc, space is quite the place to be.
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With the self-navigating feature on the prototype ESA Mars rover, the speed of travel and exploration on Mars should be far higher than with the NASA rovers.
That is, assuming it doesn't navigate itself into a hole from which it can't escape!
I can see why they want to do parallel testing of many rover prototypes on an expanded model of the Mars surface - with these "Artificial Intelligence" systems (or indeed, almost any software), you don't really know how it is going to behave in a completely novel situation.