Canberra Space Centre

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The visitor centre at Tidbinbilla contains exhibits of many space related activities and information, as well as the (obligatory) cafe and gift centre. I had quite a conversation with the person working there at the time; I was the only customer, and he and I both work in the computer business, although that was not his initial choice for line of work.

There were a number of items which bought back memories of a time, not all that long ago, when modern technology would have seemed like an impossible dream. One example was the Modcomp computer, a mini-computer of the Apollo ear. Probably little more powerful than a good desk calculator these days, but a very useful workhorse in its day.

Mars Rovers

The most interesting section of the display area was the Mars Rover model - full size. Quite amazing to think that two of these survived the journey to Mars, landing and then heading off. Although designed for 90 days of operations, several years later they are still working their way over the surface. At a Usenix conference several years ago, one of the sessions was given by 2 people from NASA, one of whom was a "rover driver". That is, he would plan the route for the next day and encode the instructions to be sent up to follow that route. The other person was the programmer who created the visualisation software to enable the former to do his job. Quite an interesting presentation.

Click here for a diagram of the rover identifying the major parts. This will appear in a new browser window.

Note the person standing on the far right of the image for a sense of scale.

The ground level view of the front.

The rover's arm to attack rocks and any fuzzy things in the way.

The side on view. Again note the person standing on the right side of the image.