Podcast: Play in new window
BOB HIRSHON (host):
Tomorrow’s space explorers. I’m Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.
Young people can now dream of someday stepping foot on the surface of Mars. But astronomer Dan Lester of Exinetics and his colleagues argue in the journal Science Robotics that thanks to modern communications technology, it would be safer and more cost effective for astronauts to conduct research remotely from spacecraft orbiting above the planet.
DAN LESTER (Exinetics):
If you send humans to Mars, you’d like to go to the poles, you’d like to go to the equator, you’d like to go in the craters. So basically what exploration telepresence allows you to do is sit up in a space station and you can control telerobots that are down in many different places.
HIRSHON:
What’s more, it would eliminate the time delays that plague data transmission between today’s Mars rovers and earth, and make it possible to explore places that are too risky for humans. I’m Bob Hirshon, for AAAS, the science society.
Story by Susanne Bard