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Marking a stuffed animal or a gem of a classic claw game on your local arcade room can make you frustrated and full of rage, so imagine the tension that stems from the use of ### ## # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # 39 a mechanism similar to millions and millions of kilometers away. That's exactly what engineers working with NASA Mars' InSight Lander are doing, for a very good reason.
In a new video, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains how the InSight lander will position its sensitive instruments on the Martian surface. The robotic arm of the spacecraft will act a bit like the claw so unreliable that we find in these arcade games, but hopefully much more accurate.
The version of NASA's "game" is more accurate than anything you can find in a fly arcade game, and it also has a much more important function.
After InSight landed on Mars in late November, the machine will have to prepare its suite of instruments for data collection. To do this, he must grasp and place each component on the surface, placing it gently so that the robot can monitor the conditions inside the planet itself.
"We have a lot on the robotic arm of InSight, so we practiced our version of the claw game dozens of times," said Tom Hoffman, InSight's project manager, in a statement. . "The difference, of course, is that unlike the claw machine designers, our robotic arm team works hard to win every time."
Of course, the team will not know how easy it is to "win" as long as the lander has not reached the red planet. The machine is designed to listen carefully to the inner workings of the planet, using seismic sensors to map its interior structure. In doing so, it could tell us a lot about the planet we did not already know, and perhaps even reveal how similar or different Mars is to Earth.
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