lab robot
The Download: farming on Mars, and lab robots
Once upon a time, water flowed across the surface of Mars. Waves lapped against shorelines, strong winds gusted and howled, and driving rain fell from thick, cloudy skies. Mars is about half the diameter of Earth, and that's where things went wrong. The Martian core cooled quickly, soon leaving the planet without a magnetic field. This, in turn, left it vulnerable to the solar wind, which swept away much of its atmosphere. Without a critical shield from the sun's ultraviolet rays, Mars could not retain its heat.