On Friday an astronaut on ISS controlled and steered a rover on Earth.
On Friday an astronaut on ISS controlled and steered a rover on Earth.
While zipping around Earth several hundred miles above the planet’s surface, European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano drove a 220-pound (100 kilograms) rover across a moon-mimicking landscape here at NASA’s Ames Research Center, even ordering the robot to deploy a simulated film-based radio telescope antenna.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
On Friday an astronaut on ISS controlled and steered a rover on Earth.
While zipping around Earth several hundred miles above the planet’s surface, European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano drove a 220-pound (100 kilograms) rover across a moon-mimicking landscape here at NASA’s Ames Research Center, even ordering the robot to deploy a simulated film-based radio telescope antenna.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I thought we already did this from planet to planet. You know, the mars rovers.
Why is NASA wasting time and money trying to prove something they already know works?
This experiment was not quite the same as controlling a rover on Mars from JPL on Earth. Having an astronaut do it on ISS means the infrastructure the astronaut uses has to be much simpler than that on Earth, much more portable and lightweight so it can get to ISS. To achieve that is important engineering that must be learned.
Thus, I wouldn’t dismiss this test as a waste.
So they built a full size rover and moon simulation test range just to test a new digital transceiver?
They didn’t need the moon simulation area or the actual remote control car. They could have tested the radio by just monitoring its digital input/output.
Everything else was off the shelf stuff used everyday all day.
I can see testing the radio. But going through the extra expense of making full size operational mock-ups and running it around on a full size simulated moon is a bit over the top.
Unless they already had the robot and moon mock-up sitting around unused then I retract my opinion.
But so far all I see is a few engineers putting together a big test just to make their work look more important than it really is.
Purpose of this is to show astronauts in orbit above the Moon could control robots producing propellant on the Moon. But to transport that propellant up to orbit you would need landers/ascent vehicles. Then why not make those landers also able to carry a crew module?
Bob Clark