io9: mars colony

Robot Ants Will Pave the Way for Martian Colony

Ed Grabianowski — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:20:00 PDT

When the first human colonists arrive on Mars, they could find a nice warm science lab and living quarters waiting for them, all built by thousands of tiny ant-size robots working and thinking collectively. European researchers are hard at work developing swarms of autonomous microbots. They can also do some other neat things aside from colonizing other planets, such as joining together to form larger robots, just like the Constructicons. Form Devastator!

The robots are being developed as part of the European Union's I-SWARM program. At this point in their research, they have assembled groups of 100 robots (their official term for these groups seems to be posse, which seems hilarious for some reason) that can communicate with each other and team up to perform tasks too large for a single bot. In one example, a robot runs into an obstacle, and shortly thereafter a bunch of other robots show up to move it out of the way. The plan is to create robots that can reconfigure themselves based on the situation at hand, or even combine with other robots to form more complex machines.

So far, they have tiny robots (pictured) that carry two kilobytes of RAM and move by vibration, and larger robots, called Jasmines, that roll around on little wheels. In addition to their Martian construction duties, the robots could be used as repair teams inside larger machines (like the Nanites on the Satellite of Love) or even medical robots that crawl around fixing things inside people. Throw in the fact that these robots will surely someday escape human control and form bizarre, hostile microbot societies, and I think it's safe to give this the H.G. Wells Award for Scientific Research Most Likely To Result In a Science Fiction Novel or Movie Coming True. Image by: I-SWARM.
Robotic Ants Building Homes On Mars? [Science Daily]

Robot Finds Melting Ice on Mars

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 07:00:00 PDT

Remember that mystery white substance that the Phoenix Lander uncovered beneath Martian soil with its robot arms? Scientists were speculating that it might be salt or it might be ice. Now, a few days later, it's looking very much like ice. Why? It's melting, as you can see in these pictures.

This represents a huge breakthrough for the mission, which had until now been unable to find much solid evidence that frozen water existed beneath the Martian pole. A release from NASA quoted lead researcher Peter Smith, who said:

It must be ice. These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that.

Early yesterday, Phoenix was digging in a trench unrelated to the icy one, and found a very hard surface that scientists might be an entire layer of ice beneath the planet's surface. This bodes well for future missions to Mars that contain humans. If the ice can be converted into something drinkable, it could become a supply of much-needed water for thirsty colonists.

Exploring the Arctic Plane of Mars [via NASA]

Suicide Mission to Mars? Astrobiologists say "No Thanks"

Michael Reilly — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 09:48:50 PDT

Astrobiologists seem to have trouble putting their money where their mouths are. Generally among the most ardent supporters of planetary exploration, around 2/3 of them got cold feet yesterday at the Astrobiology Science Conference 2008. During a talk entitled "A One-way Mission to Mars," famous cosmologist Paul Davies asked the audience who among them would volunteer for the first journey to to the Red Planet? About 1/3 — mostly women interestingly — raised their hands despite the fact that Davies stressed it "wouldn't be a suicide mission."