Mars Institute to drive HUMMER-based rover through Northwest Passage
(Source: Autobloggreen; Scientific American)
It might seem a bit paradoxical to drive a HUMMER for 1,200 miles across the thin ice of the Northwest Passage with the goal of investigating climate change in the arctic circle, but that’s exactly what a crew from the Mars Institute is planning to do. The team will be charting the thickness of the ice as it moves at about 12 miles per hour over the surface, but the information gathered during the trek will really just be a bonus. The team’s first priority will be to see how the HUMMER-based rover fares in these harsh conditions. At some point, the Mars Institute hopes that this data will prove useful in helping NASA design human-toting vehicles that will be able to traverse the surface of Mars.
The Scientific American reports : The trip using a modified armored Humvee vehicle will provide comprehensive data about the thickness of winter ice in the waterway through Canada’s high Arctic, said Pascal Lee, chairman of Mars Institute and leader of the expedition. (Above Image on Right: An ice-free Northwest Passage seen in this handout satellite photo from NASA taken in Sept. 2007. Photograph courtesy: Vancouver Sun via Terra Satellite/NASA, Reuters)The scientists also hope to learn more about what happens to the microbes left behind by humans as they explore remote areas, amid concerns from some scientists about the detrimental impact of such journeys in space.
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