CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE Curiosity on the Red Planet 4 CHAPTER TWO A Timeless Fascination with Robots 12 CHAPTER THREE Careers in Robotics 22 CHAPTER FOUR Welcome to the Future 32 Fast Facts 42 Stop and Think 44 Glossary 46 Learn More 47 Index 48 About the Author 48
CHAPTER ONE CURIOSITY ON THE RED PLANET If any one thing doesn’t work just right it’s game over said engineer Tom Rivellini It was August 5 2012 Approximately 353 million miles 568 million km from Earth a spacecraft was nearing Mars It was following a specific landing plan The mission team knew it had only one chance If something went wrong nothing could be done to fix it T h e r o b o t i c Curiosity r o v e r d r o p p e d t o t h e M a r t i a n s u r f a c e i n August 2012 5
