Terraforming a landscape for a robotic rover

Terraforming a landscape for a robotic rover Challenged to design a background for a small rover controlled from space, students in Germany have delivered a futuristic cityscape. The cool space art will be seen by astronauts in orbit via the rover's camera eye as they remotely control their avatar later this year. The ultimate goal is for robot astronauts to roam around hazardous places like Mars and asteroids guided by human controllers safely orbiting overhead in their spacecraft. As a first step, ESA is linking the International Space Station and Earth for remotely controlling terrestrial test robots from the orbital outpost. This Meteron (Multi-purpose End-To-End Robotic Operations Network) initiative is a testbed for future missions to the Moon, Mars and other celestial bodies. Astronauts to practise rover remote control "Later this year, astronauts on the Station will practise remote control of the small rover in a simulated landscape here at ESOC, says François Bosquillon de Frescheville, experiment manager at ESA's European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany. The rover - known as Meteron Operation and CommUnication Prototype, or MOCUP - is built from a LEGO© Mindstorm kit with some custom-made additions, and for now can do only simple things.