The small craft will seek to prove that powered, controlled flight is possible on another planet. But just getting it onto the surface of Mars will take a whole lot of ingenuity.

PASADENA, Calif. (NASA PR) — NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter will travel with the Perseverance rover through 314 million miles (505 million kilometers) of interplanetary space to get to Mars. But for the team working on the first experimental flight test on another planet, engineering the final 5 inches (13 centimeters) of the journey has been among the most challenging of all. To safely navigate those 5 inches — the distance Ingenuity will travel from where it’s stowed on the rover to the surface of Mars — they came up with the ingenious Mars Helicopter Delivery System.

PASADENA, Calif. (NASA PR) — The newest edition of NASA’s small, foldable robots recently practiced their scouting skills and successfully traversed rugged terrain in the Mars Yard at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

CubeRover on the lunar surface. (Credit: CubeRover)

CubeRover Platform to Revolutionize Lunar Access and Capability for Companies, Governments, Universities, and Non-Profits

LUXEMBOURG CITY, Luxembourg, September 27, 2018 (CubeRover PR) — CubeRover SARL (CubeRover) and Luxembourg announce today the agreement for the development of next-generation planetary rovers in Luxembourg.

This historic agreement marks the establishment of CubeRover’s operations in the Grand Duchy as a spin out organization from Astrobotic Technology, Inc. (Astrobotic), a space robotics company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

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Textured rows on the ground in this portion of “Perseverance Valley” are under investigation by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, which used its Navigation Camera to take the component images of this downhill-looking scene. The rover reaches its 5,000th Martian day, or sol, on Feb. 16, 2018. (Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

PASADENA, Calif. (NASA PR) — NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity keeps providing surprises about the Red Planet, most recently with observations of possible “rock stripes.”

The ground texture seen in recent images from the rover resembles a smudged version of very distinctive stone stripes on some mountain slopes on Earth that result from repeated cycles of freezing and thawing of wet soil. But it might also be due to wind, downhill transport, other processes or a combination.

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NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity recorded the dawn of the rover’s 4,999th Martian day, or sol, with its Panoramic Camera (Pancam) on Feb. 15, 2018, yielding this processed, approximately true-color scene. (Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ./Texas A&M)

PASADENA, Calif. (NASA PR) — The Sun rose on NASA’s solar-powered Mars rover Opportunity for the 5,000th time on Saturday, sending rays of energy to a golf-cart-size robotic field geologist that continues to provide revelations about the Red Planet.

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The PUFFER team hiking to Rainbow Basin to identify areas for field testing. Examples include overhung rocks (top inset), incline with prototype (middle), and a large region for general mobility testing (bottom). (Credit: NASA)

By Denise M. Stefula
NASA

The Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Robots technology, or PUFFER, is readying a prototype for field testing in Southern California’s Mojave Desert through this summer and into the fall.

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Video Caption: What’s the best way to explore comets and asteroids? Spacecraft? Rovers? The answer may be a bit both — a spacecraft/rover hybrid. Exploring small bodies like comets and asteroids could shed light on the origin and evolution of the solar system and even the origin of life on our planet. Watch as Marco Pavone, Stanford University, and Ben Hockman, student, Stanford University, discuss their NASA Innovative Advanced Concept […]

The rover perches atop “Mount Kosmo” rock yard at Johnson during its first test drive. (Credit: NASA)

By Denise M. Stefula
NASA

The Human Robotic Systems’ (HRS) rover technologies element that supports Advanced Exploration System’s Resource Prospector (RP) Mission, RP15, successfully demonstrated mobility during initial testing on August 5 at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

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NASA has selected Tethers Unlimited, Inc., (TUI) for three Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I awards for materials that can be recycled on the International Space Station (ISS), an anchoring system that would allow rovers to explore rough terrain on other worlds, and a gimbal that would assist balloons in exploring the atmospheres of Venus and Titan.

Now that there is a 3D printer on the station, TUI is interested in developing cargo ship packing materials that can be easily recycled into feed stock for the printer.

“TUI proposes to develop Customizable Recyclable International Space Station Packaging (CRISSP), which is a set of materials, formats, and design methodologies optimized both for (1) the economic and mechanical requirements for ISS supplies packaging and (2) being efficiently recyclable onboard the ISS into high performance 3D printer feedstock,” the proposal states. “A range of packaging formats will be evaluated for use, including common bubble-wrap, foams, folded and thermoformed shells, and parametric cellular additively-manufactured boxes that can be readily optimized for specific payloads and launch environments.”

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Ontario Drive Gear rover (Credit: PISCES)

HILO, Hawaii (PISCES PR) — The Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems (PISCES) is just a few weeks away from having its very own robotic spacecraft! As of this writing, a rover is at Ontario Drive Gear (ODG), packed in a crate and ready to make its trek to the Big Island of Hawaii.

Thanks to our partnership with ODG, PISCES is able to use the rover via an extended loan agreement.

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