Can Rover sniff out life on Mars?
FIRST it was Beagle 2 that put Stevenage on the map of space exploration. Now aerospace company EADS-Astrium hopes to redeem itself after that failure with the Rover, a robot vehicle it is hoped will crawl across the surface of Mars at little more than a
FIRST it was Beagle 2 that put Stevenage on the map of space exploration.
Now aerospace company EADS-Astrium hopes to redeem itself after that failure with the Rover, a robot vehicle it is hoped will crawl across the surface of Mars at little more than a snail's pace.
Beagle 2 vanished without trace minutes before it was due to land on the Martian landscape on Christmas Day 2003 leaving red faces at EADS-Astrium followed by a further rebuke in a later report saying the project was flawed and under-funded.
Now, though, the Rover, which is costing £154m, has shown it has the technology and the ability to crawl on Mars by completing a series of tests on a mountain top in Tenerife.
The landscape around the summit of Mount Teide, the world's third largest volcano that last erupted in 1909, proved the perfect obstacle course and, after a week crawling around the barren, rock-strewn tundra, the two Stevenage engineers who carried out the experiments reported they were satisfied with rover.
The vehicle is a prototype of the vehicle that will be sent off in the direction of the Red Planet some time in 2011 and is the central feature in the European Space Agency's £400m project known as ExoMars.
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The Rover is a six-wheeled device that may answer many of the questions about Mars including is there life on the planet?
With a top speed of just one tenth of a mile an hour, Rover was put through its paces by two scientists with a remote control.
"For a prototype it worked very well," said project head Lester Waugh.
"It demonstrated its capabilities very well and now we have to work further on the semi-autonomous navigation system and the other science packages including the instruments that will hopefully, scan, drill and sample the Martian surface."
With the same team that gave life to Beagle 2 now working on the rover, there would be cause to celebrate if it actually got to Mars and would prompt a major party at the EADS-Astrium site in Gunnels Wood Road if it found its Stevenage mate Beagle 2.
