NASA tests future moon landing robots on Canada's fake moon site
NASA is testing two new robots designed to for future moon landings in a crater in Canada, both of which are equipped with some high end kit designed to analyze their surroundings. Loaded up with "GPS, stereo cameras, laser scanners and sun trackers," the K10 Black and K10 Red can laser map terrain over 3,000 feet away, and fire radar into the ground and detect features up to 16.4 feet down. Running on regular laptop batteries, the robots are able to cover over 120 acres of ground and operate for up to five hours at a time, providing far more information than the restricted space-suit wearing astronauts are able to gather. Now all NASA's gotta do is get the robots onto the moon by the around-2020 date that the adminstration keeps mentioning.
[Via The Register]