Defying 30 mph gusts and temperatures down to minus 22 F,
NASA’s new polar rover recently demonstrated in Greenland that it could operate
completely autonomously in one of Earth’s harshest environments.
The robot known as GROVER, which stands for both Greenland
Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research, was
designed by teams of students attending engineering boot camps at Goddard in
the summers of 2010 and 2011. Built to carry a ground-penetrating radar to
analyze layers of snow and ice, the rover was later transferred to Boise State
University for fine-tuning with NASA funding.