NASA rover to explore… Greenland

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  A prototype of GROVER, minus its solar panels, was tested in January 2012 at a ski resort in Idaho. The laptop in the picture is for testing purposes only and not part of the final product.Gabriel Trisca, Boise State University

NASA's newest rover won't be exploring another planet, but will take a look at part of our own. 

Named Grover (short for Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research), the rover will explore Greenland's ice sheets to better understand how they form, and how quickly they may be melting.

The device is solar-powered and semi-autonomous, and will embark on its first mission beginning Friday, May 3, and continuing until June 8. It was developed from 2010-2011 by teams of students in summer engineering boot camps at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, according to a release from NASA.

The 6-foot-tall, 800-pound rover is equipped with ground-penetrating radar that will send "radio wave pulses into the ice sheet, and the waves bounce off buried features, informing researchers about the characteristics of the snow and ice layers," according to the NASA statement. [Video: Grover the Rover to Explore Greenland Ice Sheet]

At first Grover will operate near the National Science Foundation's Summit Camp, located at the apex of Greenland's ice sheet. Once it appears the rover is functioning properly, it will roam more widely and be controlled via satellite. Since the Arctic sun shines 24 hours a day during the summer, the solar-powered rover will be able to operate continuously, NASA said.

"We think it's really powerful," Gabriel Trisca, a Boise State master's degree student who developed Grover's software, said in the NASA statement. "The fact is the robot could be anywhere in the world and we'll be able to control it from anywhere."

Grover should shed light on Greenland's snow accumulation. Researchers can compare annual accumulation to the amount of ice lost to the sea each year to find out how much mass is being lost to melting, and how much Greenland's ice is contributing to sea level rise.

Greenland's ice sheets contain a vast store of freshwater that could affect global sea levels, and more and more ice is melting. In fact, Greenland's ice loss is accelerating by about 22 gigatons of ice each year, according to a 2012 study.

Last summer, satellite images showed that about 40 percent of the ice sheet had thawed near the surface on July 8; only four days later, images showed a dramatic increase in melting with thawing across 97 percent of the ice sheet surface.

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NASA's Mars rover Curiosity sidelined again after computer glitch

Published March 18, 2013

Associated Press

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  This artist's concept features NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life. Curiosity is slated to launch toward the Red Planet on Nov. 26, 2011.NASA/JPL-Caltech

LOS ANGELES –  Another problem is preventing the Mars rover Curiosity from resuming its science experiments.

The mission's chief scientist said Monday the rover went into safe mode again over the weekend because of a computer file error. In safe mode, activities are on hold but the rover remains in contact with Earth.

Curiosity was sidelined earlier this month after a problem with its computer memory. The team had hoped to restart experiments this week when the new problem cropped up.

Since arriving at Gale Crater last year, Curiosity drilled into its first rock and determined the ancient environment could have supported primitive life. Scientists have planned more drilling before starting the long journey toward a mountain.

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Curiosity rover first robot to ever drill into Mars

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has beamed home photos confirming that it recovered samples from deep within a Red Planet rock, cementing the robot's place in exploration history.

The Curiosity rover drilled 2.5 inches into a Martian outcrop on Feb. 8, and Wednesday mission scientists first set eyes on images showing drill tailings sitting in Curiosity's scoop, waiting to be transferred to analytical instruments on the robot's body.

The photos confirm that Curiosity has pulled off an historic achievement, scientists said.

"This is the first time any robot, fixed or mobile, has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on

"In fact, this is the first time any rover has drilled into a rock to collect a sample anywhere but on Earth," Jandura added. "In the five-decade history of the space age, this is indeed a rare event." [Curiosity's First Drilling on Mars (Photos)]

Breaking open a time capsule
Curiosity landed inside Mars' huge Gale Crater on the night of Aug. 5, kicking off a two-year prime mission to determine if the area has ever been capable of supporting microbial life.

Along with its 10 science instruments and 17 cameras, Curiosity's hammering drill is considered key to this quest, for it allows scientists to peer deep into Martian rocks for evidence of past habitability — something no other Red Planet robot has been able to do.

The arm-mounted drill "allows us to go beyond the surface layer of the rock, unlocking a kind of time capsule of evidence about the state of Mars going back three or four billion years," Jandura said.

The first drilling location is an intriguing time capsule indeed, scientists say. Curiosity bored into part of an outcrop called "John Klein," which is shot through with light-colored mineral veins and other evidence of long-ago exposure to liquid water.

"All of these features tell us that the rocks in this area have a really rich geological history, and they have the potential to give us information about multiple interactions between water and rock at this location," said JPL's Joel Hurowitz, sampling system scientist for Curiosity.

Mission scientists will learn more about that history when the drilled sample is transferred to two of Curiosity's key instruments, CheMin (short for Chemistry and Mineralogy) and SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars).

"That'll play out over the next few days here," said JPL's Daniel Limonadi, lead systems engineer for Curiosity's surface sampling and science system.

A few glitches
The recovered powder has already been used to clean out Curiosity's sample-handling system, to help ensure that the system is scrubbed free of potential contaminants from Earth. A minor software glitch has delayed the delivery of the sample to CheMin and SAM, but the team found a workaround, researchers said.

The Curiosity team has also become aware of another potential issue with the the sample-handling hardware. Engineers built two models of this hardware to run tests here on Earth, and the sieve — which screens out particles more than 0.006 inches (150 microns) wide — has begun to detach on one of them.

But this only happened after extensive use, and the sieve remained functional, rover team members said. And they stressed that there is no sign of any problem with the sample-handling gear Curiosity toted to Mars, though they'll take some measures to lessen the sieve's workload on the Red Planet (such as sieving samples for 20 minutes rather than 60 minutes, which Curiosity had done previously with soil samples).

"Based on the test results to date, and based on how we expect to use the hardware on Mars, we really have pretty good confidence that we're going to be able to use this hardware through the prime mission and beyond," Limonadi said.

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