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- WASHINGTON - A new U.S. mission to Mars will let school children help operate
a robotic rover as it rolls over the red Martian surface, former astronaut
John Glenn announced Thursday.
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- The Mars Surveyor 2001 mission, set to
launch in 2001, will allow student "astronauts,'' living in a simulated
Mars base on Earth, to assist in manipulating the rover on Mars, according
to Glenn, a former senator.
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- "For the first time, students will
participate in controlling a vehicle on another world,'' Glenn said in
announcing the Red Rover Goes To Mars project at the National Air and Space
Museum.
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- Glenn was standing steps away from the
Friendship 7 space capsule he rode into orbit in 1962 as a Mercury astronaut
in the early days of the U.S. space program. He returned to space flight
last year aboard shuttle Discovery at the age of 77.
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- "Perhaps one day a student selected
for the Red Rover Goes To Mars project will become one of the first astronauts
to actually land on Mars itself,'' Glenn said.
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- The Red Rover project will pick students
aged 11 to 17 from around the world, starting with an essay contest to
be announced this October, Glenn said.
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- As many as 100 students may ultimately
be chosen for the project, depending on mission constraints, according
to a spokeswoman for the Planetary Society, a space-boosting organization
that is supporting the venture.
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- Some will be student "astronauts,''
working side-by-side with scientists who use computers to control the rover.
Others will be student scientists who will assist members of the Mars Surveyor
2001 science teams, Glenn said.
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- "You're going to actually get a
chance to actually drive flight hardware on another planet,'' said Bill
Nye, a children's science show host on U.S. public television and a member
of Planetary Society's board, who was also present for the announcement.
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- Nye said students will also be able to
compete to create a tiny "nano-experiment,'' about the size of a pea
and weighing only a few ounces (grams) to be affixed to the rover.
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- Through the Internet, students around
the world will be able to replicate the experiments of the student astronauts,
using miniature robotic rovers that they construct themselves.
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- The rover, to be called the Marie Curie,
will be the same type of vehicle as Sojourner, the boxy rolling robot deployed
on Mars in 1997.
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- The Mars Surveyor 2001 mission will be
run by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, and the Red Rover Goes To Mars plan is a project of the Planetary
Society and the Lego company.
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- The project is an outgrowth of an existing
program called Red Rover, Red Rover " the name of an American children's
game " in which students at 400 schools and science centers around
the world can use Internet-linked computers to "tele-operate'' robotic
rovers on Earth.
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