Solar panels and radar mounted on snowmobile tracks? Meet Nasa's new Greenland rover dubbed Grover
NASA has launched its newest rover, an 800-pound machine mounted on caterpillar tracks, which will explore the Greenland ice sheet.
From May 3 to June 8, the robot dubbed GROVER, which stands for both Greenland Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research, will trudge through the glacial landscape studying snow accumulations thanks to its ground-penetrating radar.
The Greenland ice sheet made headlines last summer when unusually high temperatures in the region caused 97 per cent of the surface layer to melt.
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Explorer: NASA's new Earth-bound rover, GROVER, which stands for both Greenland Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research, in Summit Camp, the highest spot in Greenland
World-class project: Students from a NASA Goddard summer engineering boot camp designed the 6-foot-tall, 800-power machine equipped with solar panels and a radar
Now, NASA scientists are hoping that GROVER will be able to pinpoint the layer of the ice that formed after the 2012 melt.
The solar-powered robot was created between 2010 and 2011 by students taking part in engineering boot camps operated by NASA at the Goddard research center in Maryland.
The prototype of the rover is mounted on reused snowmobile tracks and stands at 6 feet, including its solar panels.
The robot is powered entirely by solar energy, so it does not produce any air pollution. The solar panels are mounted in an inverted V, allowing them to collect energy from the sun and sunlight reflected off the ice sheet.
VIDEO Meet Grover. NASA's new Greenland rover with solar panels and radar
Impressive hardware: A prototype of the NASA rover GROVER mounted on snowmobile tracks, minus its solar panels, was tested in January 2012 at a ski resort in Idaho
Since the sun never fully sets during the Arctic summer, GROVER can work 24 hours a day, moving about at an average speed of 1.2mph.
GROVER features a ground-penetrating radar powered by two rechargeable batteries. The device sends 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.
Lora Koenig, a glaciologist at Goddard and science advisor on the project, will operate GROVER from a field camp using Wifi during a test period, but researchers will eventually make the switch to satellite communications to allow the rover to venture farther and will be able to control it from their desks.
‘GROVER is just like a spacecraft but it has to operate on the ground,’ said Michael Comberiate, manager of Goddard's Engineering Boot Camp. ‘It has to survive unattended for months in a hostile environment, with just a few commands to interrogate it and find out its status and give it some directions for how to accommodate situations it finds itself in.’
Meltdown: The Greenland ice sheet made headlines last summer when unusually high temperatures in the region caused 97 per cent of the surface layer to melt