- NASA is currently working on a new mars rover that is set to land on the red planet in 2020. This rover will not only further NASA's research in seeking signs of habitable conditions, but also seek signs of past microbial life. The rover will be able to drill into Mars' surface and collect core samples, that will later possibly be able to return to earth. The new rover will be based on the Curiosity rover and Mars Science Laboratory mission. It is planned to be sent to Mars in July/August of 2020, because earth and mars will have optimal launching orientation.
- The engineers at NASA have been working very hard and very long on this project. NASA's Mars exploration program has been around since 1994 and this is only one of many other projects being worked on. The engineers luckily have been able to use many of the same concepts from last rover. One new invention, is the invention of a drill that will be able to drill and take samples of the soil and set it aside in a "cache" for it to be returned to earth.
- This invention will actually significantly impact the world. Recently NASA has been exploring space to find other habitable planets to send humans to live on and this rover will be testing many things. The rover will be seeking signs of past life, collecting core rock and soil samples and testing oxygen production on mars to prep for human exploration. This also being a project that is not actively exploring allows for many new innovations to be added before July/August of 2020 when it is set to launch. Some of the tests that the rover will be doing to further human exploration is understanding daily and seasonal change and measuring wind and dust in the atmosphere.
- This inventions is similar to our JPL competition because clearly neither are solo projects, they are group projects. I believe my team is successful in some aspects and not so successful in others. We all have good ideas and all want to get a working system, but we rush most things. Instead of fully thinking out our ideas we just add on and this later causes us to come across other problems. For example, we have a working prototype but it is built very poorly. Our tall metal rods have no support and this causes our system to not work correctly. Now we are fully working on our final system and we have thought out more of the problems that we would encounter.
- https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/overview/