Gadgetory

NASA showed off their new moon lander in a facebook livestream on Wednesday highlighting some key future moon missions which include finding water exploring the moon's poles and scouting for future moon landing sites the moon rover is currently being developed at the NASA Ames Research Center in Northern California NASA scientists have built a large model of the moon's surface for the purpose of teaching future exploration robots how to see in the dark the sun's light cast long shadows at the moon's poles that contrast with the terrain this makes it very difficult for a rover to see where it's going and it needs to avoid getting stuck in a crater you really want to do is recreate some of these scenes with the terrain and the lighting to be able to test new sensors and software the rover is equipped with a pair of stereo imaging cameras which help the robot calculate depth perception like a human's eyes these cameras also produce a polar optical lunar analog reconstruction or polar data set which provides standard information for future Rover designers and programmers to develop algorithms and set up sensors to safely navigate Rover missions on any number of planets with different types of terrain these lunar experiments are a precursor for the resource prospector mission which will be the first mining expedition on another world according to NASA the planned Rover mission is designed to excavate volatiles such as hydrogen oxygen and water from the moon no robotic mission has ever explored the poles of the moon and we don't know very much about these unique lighting conditions and how they might affect robots navigating and exploring known to rain