| starlight | Date: Saturday, 10-January-2015, 6:36 PM | Message # 1 |
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| Nasa throws robot into volcano to explore fissures, could help understand alien planets
Nasa is to throw a small robot into a volcano that will help explore the fissures and volcanic vents.
Nobody really knows how volcanoes erupt, and the experiment will shed light on what actually goes on inside a volcano, as well as being practice for exploring similar areas on the moon and Mars. So Nasa is sending the robot to explore a volcanic fissure — a crack that erupts magma.
Researchers Carolyn Parcheta and Aaron Parness at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have developed a new robot that will be able to climb into crevices where humans aren’t able to go.
Parcheta is a post-doctoral fellow at the JPL. She has worked with the robotics team at the lab to make the robot, known as VolcanoBot 2. (The first VolcanoBot went into an inactive fissure in Hawaii.)
The new one is lighter and smaller, and more able to get into difficult crevices. It can also store its data onboard, which could help it get deeper into the fissure.
Read more/Full article/source - http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st....45.html
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