UNDER THE HOOD
We think there's water on other planets, but is there life? The answer may ultimately come from a network of inexpensive probes being developed by NASA's Sensor Webs Project (sensorwebs.jpl.nasa.gov) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The early prototype pictured here is fashioned from off-the-shelf components and housed in a watertight shell retrofitted from a half-sandwich-sized Tupperware container. Each sensor acts as a node in a wireless network, monitoring the environment for subtle signs of biological activity. Someday dozens of next-generation probes may be dropped from spacecraft or placed by telerobotic rovers. The resulting planetary snapshot would combine the precision of onsite sensing with the wide coverage of a satellite. JPLhas already deployed a test network of probes in the diverse microclimates found at the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. Next stop? Antarctica in 2001 or 2002. And then maybe Mars.
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