Robot snakes on a plane. Well, on a rocket. An unmanned mission to Mars lead by Europe may include robot snakes, if a new study proves successful. Scientists performing research for the European Space Agency are examining if and how a robotic snake could be used to explore the Red Planet.
Robots are no strangers to Mars. The latest and greatest is NASA’s Curiosity rover, which has amazed Earthlings with incredible landscape images and new findings. Curiosity, however, is a wheeled rover, which limits where it can go. Hoping to build a Mars probe that will be able to travel more efficiently over rough terrain, scientists in Europe are believe a snake design will be the answer.
International Business Times says that Norway’s SINTEF Research Institute is tasked with studying whether a robot snake could be effective on Mars . But why robot snakes? Senior research scientist Aksel Transeth points to real snakes. Transeth says that snakes can move through a wide variety of terrain, no matter how rugged. They can even climb rock walls or slip through small openings.
Transeth and his team have done research before on the possible uses of robot snakes in emergency and rescue situations. However, the European Space Agency has recently given the Institute large research funds to explore possibility sending a robot snake to Mars. The researchers say they expect to finish their findings by December.
The European Space Agency says they do not wish to replace the current Mars rover. Instead, they believe a novel rover design could compliment the current and future space mission. ABC News says that Howie Choset, a robotics professor with Carnegie Mellon University, believes robot snakes on Mars could prove very useful . Such a rover “could find a crevasse, crawl down it and extract a sample, which itself could tell us how Mars evolved as a planet.”
ExoMars, a Europe-lead Mars rover mission, comes in 2016 and 2018. While there are no plans yet to use robot snakes for these Mars missions, the possibility has not been completely ruled out.
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