extremophile

11.21.09

Is This the Machine That Will Finally Find Life On Mars?

It may not look like much, but this humble 'bot may be our best shot at proving we´re not alone in the universe. First, though, the scientists testing it in Chile's Atacama Desert have to figure out how to control the thing

By Joseph Hooper Posted 01.29.2006 at 2:00 am 1 Comment

When we catch up with the robot, it is poking along in a herky-jerky and rather flummoxed fashion through the Atacama Desert, which covers much of far northern Chile. The Atacama is reputedly the driest place on Earth, with rainfall measured in millimeters per decade. It is a rough place for man or robot, a tawny maze of high plateaus and shaley foothills under constant sun and an enormous cobalt-blue sky.

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