The list of UTube video displays of these was long, and varied widely in the degrees to which the robotic 'creatures were successful in stability under stresses, but well worth watching. I look forward to some fine Earth based, and ET type rover/robots soon. Unfortunately for many of us, missions with these may at the end of, or after, our lives, as we are an aging population.
I sure wish we were making additional runs with the MRO type crafts, as the mapping is a great resource to spent our 'free' time with in the public. These robots could travels areas not traversable by the simpler 'wheeled' carts.
Here is an interesting detail from the MRO/HiRISE south polar ice cap seasonal exposure which I find important in studying the transformation of the polar layers. This is a landscape set of details which could be accomplished by a hardened 'walking' robotic survey device. Without these walking type robots we will never have the closeups needed to secure the process details.
The source image was ESP_01444_0935, and this scene is about 400 feet wide, with the small mound bright spots about the size of manhole covers. The marked fluted radial crystalline patterns seem to disappear as fluted upon the exposure to direct sunlight, and have none-the-less a bright peak remaining in sunlit conditions. This would indicate a tall structural ascent with a converted outer slope giving a probable active geology factor in the layered sublimating terrain areas. As the image is poor as yet, and this is 4x or greater enlargement of the HiRISE photo, I will work on better detailing of this. I had noticed this before, but can't seem to extract the closeup fine details adequately.
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TIF type available online also.
More later. What are these, and are they related to active fans(elsewhere)?
