NASA's latest successful mission to explore the Red Planet drove London's Kingston University research team to develop a lighter framework for Mars rovers.
A chief academic at London’s Kingston University stated that the recent achievement of landing NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars will create a revolution in space exploration.
According to Dr Baker, following President Barack Obama’s announcement stating that U.S. will send manned missions to Mars by the mid-2030s, in the U.S. space exploration missions have gained a significant importance. NASA intends on sending a mission to Mars once in two years. The impending mission scheduled for 2014 will focus on green house gases. The European Space Agency’s programme will be powered by this mission, and will launch ExoMars, its own rover, to the Red Planet in 2018.
Following a period of eight months travel that stretches across 154 million miles, the rover begun remitting images from the Red Planet soon after landing at 6:30am BST on August 6. For two subsequent years, the rover will investigate the Martian environment to analyze its potential to support life.
This mission is an expensive and valuable initiative by NASA with the rover’s cost reaching £1.6 B.
With expertise in several Mars rover projects, Kingston University researchers focus on visiting Earth's nearest planetary neighbour, exploring means to reduce chassis, thereby promoting efficiency. The university has partnered with the space subsidiary of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, Astrium UK that recognizes the best astronautics and space engineering students of Kingston on an annual basis.
Source: http://www.kingston.ac.uk/