Word: robotical
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...Yemen: Call it the Trespasser mission. Three Yemeni men are suing NASA, claiming that the plucky Sojourner robot has been doing wheelies all over their front lawn. "We inherited the planet from our ancestors 3,000 years ago," explained planetary landlords Adam Ismail, Mustafa Khalil and Abdullah al-Umari in court documents. "Sojourner and Pathfinder. . . began exploring it without informing us or seeking our approval...
...from Earth once again stirred up the Martian dust. More important, for the first time ever, it was going to be able to keep stirring it up well after it landed. Curled up inside Pathfinder like a mechanical kangaroo joey was Sojourner, a 1-ft.-tall, 2-ft.-long robot car, known as a rover, designed to trundle away from the lander and investigate rocks all over the desert-like site...
...drive through the Martian countryside should begin this Friday, July 4. At about 10 a.m. Pacific time, after a seven-month journey, NASA's Pathfinder spacecraft will deposit the robot car--dubbed Sojourner--on the Martian surface, marking the first time an American spacecraft has kicked up the Martian soil since the Viking landings in 1976. More important, it will be the first time that NASA has been able to move an unmanned vehicle from place to place on a foreign world. "I truly believe," says project scientist Matthew Golombek, "that Pathfinder will change our view of Mars...
...plunging as low as -125[degrees]F at night) kills it. The Pathfinder lander, also able to take readings, could function for up to a year. No matter when the machines wink out, however, Mars is unlikely to remain unattended. On Sept. 12, Global Surveyor, another robot probe, will arrive at the planet, settle into a 250-mile-high orbit and begin two years of mapping the surface. A second lander-and-orbiter pair is set to be dispatched Marsward in 1998, with more to follow roughly every other year until 2004. Finally, in 2005, the program will culminate...
...American aboard the Mir space station were playing a video game with the highest possible stakes. Outside, an unmanned Progress cargo ship hung in space, pointing its television camera toward Mir. Inside, Commander Vasily Tsibliyev watched a monitor as he operated a pair of joysticks, coaxing the robot ship in for a docking. But inexplicably, Progress stopped responding to Tsibliyev's commands and rammed the station. The collision damaged Mir's solar panels and punctured its hull, threatening not only the lives of the crew but perhaps the future of U.S.-Russian collaboration in space as well...