Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Popular Science: More on Athlete

The Lunar Habitat Hauler

Popular Science Online has posted perhaps the best, well, "popular" close up look yet at Athlete, under going testing at JPL. A featured video shows off more nifty detail of what is certain to become an iconic and integral part of NASA's nomadic lunar exploration paradigm, now being shown-off to the general public.

Annemarie Conte posted the close-up video presentation at PopSci Tuesday afternoon, April 22.

"The mission-ready robot," she writes, "which will be about twice the size of the prototype pictured here and made of steel, should be able to haul a load of up to 15 tons pretty much anywhere it wants to—as long as it obeys a 3mph speed limit. “That’s about as fast as you can go without risking flipping over because of the low gravity,” explains Brian Wilcox, the primary investigator on the Athlete project...."

"Scientists at JPL hope to rocket Athlete to the moon for unmanned testing as early as 2012. What would come next depends on the success of NASA’s plans for manned space exploration"

Read more HERE.

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