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*While standing in a checkout line this afternoon with my husband, I happened to notice an article on the front page of a stack of USA Today newspapers, concerning an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute called "Mars Yard" (which was built by a group of high school students in Virginia), and a little rover. I decided to do some fishing around via Google and post this information.
Apparently another "Mars Yard" is in the works via a different group of students in Virginia as well. Those Virginians...what verve!
From the web article:
"Dubbed the Personal Exploration Rover, it's just about the cutest semiautonomous, six-wheeled robotic vehicle you ever did see. About a foot long and a little less than that wide, the 10-pound rover looked like an eager puppy as it snuffled about, swiveling its periscope-like camera from side to side inside a walled playpen called the 'Mars yard.'...Museum visitors don't use a joystick to drive the rover around the faux Mars-scape. Instead, they wait while the rover's digital camera spins around, snapping a 360-degree panoramic image of its surroundings. Then, on a computer screen, they pull up a map of the Martian surface and click on the rover's current location and which of three rocks they want to examine for signs of organo-fluorescence, an indicator of certain types of bacteria."
The article (above...not the newspaper article) also mentions a college student from England at the Smithsonian, viewing the exhibit; she is mourning the loss of Beagle 2 and a cousin of hers worked on Beagle's software.
--Cindy
P.S.: Beneath the big photo of Mars on the front page of USA Today was an attention-getter for kids: Marvin the Martian (cartoon figure). I'm like, what's up with him being on there...didn't he always want to blow up the Earth because it "obstructed his view of Venus"?! :;):
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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