Giant Freakin Robot

NASA goes medieval! Over the past few years, NASA has made their rovers to look friendly and acceptable to human eyes. For example, the Mars Rover Curiosity almost looks like Pixar’s Wall-E. But NASA’s new design for an upcoming rover has a more medieval look, as it resembles a spiked battle mace.

The Phobos Surveyor

Engineers and scientists from Stanford, MIT, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have designed new rovers called Phobos Surveyors, nicknamed “hedgehogs.” This rover will explore the Martian Moon of Phobos in the near future. The rover would deploy one or more mace-like ball rovers from its mothership, which will remain in orbit around the moon. It will have the ability to launch and leap across the moon’s surface to collect data and explore.

Let the show begin! Two Russian amateur astronomers have recently discovered a fiery comet that is expected to pass by the Sun at a really close distance. The effect of the comet’s journey will make for one of the brightest comets since 1965. The comet is said to be so bright that it will be very visible during the daytime without a telescope.

According to Discovery, Russian amateur Astronomers Artyom Novichonok and Vitali Nevski have discovered this colorful comet far beyond Jupiter’s orbit on September 21st. Astronomers and scientist are calling the comet “ISON,” named for the International Scientific Optical Network which discovered it. The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center is forecasting the ISON comet’s brightness as visible without the aid of binoculars or a telescope.

Novichonok writes…

The object was slow and had a unique movement. But we could not be certain that it was a comet, because the scale of ours images are quite small (2”/px), and the object was very compact. But we had time on a 1.5-m reflector Majdanak Observatory. We decided to use this time, we knew we had clear sky at Uzbekistan next night. We wanted to make sure that the new object is a comet, and then send the message about (the) discovery.

Since 1995 with the discovery of the first exoplanet, scientists and astronomers have been intrigued by the possibility of finding a planet exactly like Earth, in terms of temperature, geological makeup, and distance from its sun. We might be closer to finding Earth’s twin because scientists believe this discovery may come in 2013.

According to Blastr.com, scientists have discovered more than 800 exoplanets since 1995 but a majority of them were Jupiter-like planets with hostile environments that are not suitable for human life. But with recent discoveries of the Tau Ceti star and the Alpha Centauri sun, the possibility of finding an Earth-like planet is very likely. Abel Mendez of the Planetary Habitability Lab at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo said, “I’m very positive that the first Earth twin will be discovered next year.”

With technology like NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, scientists are now able to detect exoplanets that are further away from their suns, which would place them in a “habitable zone” to sustain life like Earth.

When I first joined the staff here at Giant Freakin’ Robot, I knew I would probably be covering some truly bizarre and fascinating stories. Now I find myself writing about a “space spider,” and much to my disappointment, I’m not describing giant alien spiders from another world who have come to harvest us all. Hell, I’m not even writing this huddled inside a disused fallout shelter, listening to the screams of people trapped in the enormous webs outside. Alas, that story will have to wait till another day (possibly December 21, 2012), but we can take comfort that I do get the chance to celebrate the exciting life of Nefertiti: Spidernaut.

Meet Neffi the Spidernaut