Mexico:
A Mars traveller robot has been designed by 10 university students of Mexico. The invention has now been recognised by NASA and the International Astronautical Federation.
"It is a completely Mexican design," Bryan Perez, one of the members of the team, told Xinhua on Saturday.
The nine university students are pursuing engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and one team member is from the Nationbal Polytechnic Institute.
"We are convinced that Mexico has the knowledge, the drive and the power to innovate in aerospace, which is just beginning here," said Perez.
The robot is said to have two stereoscopic cameras to plot terrain and a third one located below its body, in order to check the samples collected by a hook.
The robot has additional qualities of artificial vision, terrain plotting, path selection abilities. It can also search, gather and reserve samples from the surface of Mars.
The team of the university students has been commended for its achievement at the Sample Return Robot Challenge in 2014 and 2016, a NASA organised competition for universities and firms that work on Mars travellers, said Perez.
