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Outsourcing IT to Mars; Your own Mars Rover


YOUR OWN MARS CONTROLED ROVER

Our inventive technology editors are at it again. This time, they've hacked a working connection to both Mars Exploration Rovers. Instead of toying around with remote Lego bots in someone's backyard, you can now pilot Spirit and Opportunity. So grab your joystick and get Roving!

NWC Rover Control
Click here to Load Control Center

Important note: we hope you enjoy our rover control for what it is...a tongue-in-cheek jest at our daring young programmers at the JPL, who have been able to bring us to another world through their efforts -- save for the occasional out of memory error.





RED ROVER, RED ROVER, SEND A NEW CPU OVER

NASA has been known to pay $4,000 for a hammer, so it's easy to understand why it chose the hardware gracing the insides of its Mars Rover: a 1990s PowerPC chip with 128 MB of RAM. In the spirit of human exploration, the top minds at NETWORK COMPUTING have come up with a way to give the next Rover better stability while letting NASA stay on budget. We present the SuperNewton Utility Computer--SUC, for short.

Hey, any PDA good enough for Steven Seagal should be tough enough to handle Mars.


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