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This week's CSI is of the Field Integrated Design & Operations (FIDO) rover, NASAspeak for a prototype telerobot now being tested for NASA's next mission to Mars.

FIDO will not be the first telerobot to go sniffing around the Martian surface. The 1996 Mars Pathfinder mission deployed Sojourner, which took some great pictures of the planet's rocky surface and gathered valuable data. The Mars Surveyor Program's Polar Lander was not successful, but FIDO won't be on a rescue mission. (That little barrel of xxx might leak in flight anyway.) NASA is expecting the rover to fetch detailed information about the ancient water and climate of Mars.

FIDO is about the size of a St. Bernard--nearly twice the size of Sojourner (think Brittany spaniel). FIDO's creators at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab have outfitted the telerobot with a mast-mounted stereo imager (PanCam), a microscopic imager, two kinds of spectrometers and a mini-coring device. These cool instruments will allow FIDO to document the nooks and crannies of the Red Planet with minimal direction from its handlers on Earth. FIDO's technical gear is collectively known as the Athena payload.

The PanCam will do two things: assist FIDO's navigation and engineering sensors in keeping itself out of trouble and scope out good rocks and soil for the other instruments to examine. The microscopic imager will record closeups of selected rocks and soils so FIDO can decide whether to drill with the mini-corer or unleash the spectrometers, devices capable of breaking light into its constituent, telltale wavelengths, and that can help reveal the mineralogy of rocks and soils by recording and analyzing the unique light that each reflects. The mini-coring device, built by Honeybee Robotics, will sample the soil layers.

Until blastoff, FIDO is being tested in the Mars-like conditions of the deserts of Nevada and California.

Image courtesy of NASA.


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			A Purebred Martian Bloodhound This week's CSI is of the Field Integrated Design & Operations (FIDO) rover, NASAspeak for a prototype telerobot now being tested for NASA's next mission to Mars. FIDO will not be the first telerobot to go sniffing around the Martian surface. The 1996 Mars Pathfinder mission deployed Sojourner, which took some great pictures of the planet's rocky surface and gathered valuable data. The Mars Surveyor Program's Polar Lander was not successful, but FIDO won't be on a rescue mission. (That little barrel of xxx might leak in flight anyway.) NASA is expecting the rover to fetch detailed information about the ancient water and climate of Mars. FIDO is about the size of a St. Bernard--nearly twice the size of Sojourner (think Brittany spaniel). FIDO's creators at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab have outfitted the telerobot with a mast-mounted stereo imager (PanCam), a microscopic imager, two kinds of spectrometers and a mini-coring device. These cool instruments will allow FIDO to document the nooks and crannies of the Red Planet with minimal direction from its handlers on Earth. FIDO's technical gear is collectively known as the Athena payload. The PanCam will do two things: assist FIDO's navigation and engineering sensors in keeping itself out of trouble and scope out good rocks and soil for the other instruments to examine. The microscopic imager will record closeups of selected rocks and soils so FIDO can decide whether to drill with the mini-corer or unleash the spectrometers, devices capable of breaking light into its constituent, telltale wavelengths, and that can help reveal the mineralogy of rocks and soils by recording and analyzing the unique light that each reflects. The mini-coring device, built by Honeybee Robotics, will sample the soil layers. Until blastoff, FIDO is being tested in the Mars-like conditions of the deserts of Nevada and California. Image courtesy of NASA.