You may have heard that NASA has successfully landed the Curiosity rover on Mars to begin exploration, and we already known that they did with the help of Macs, and lots of them.
Now you might imagine that the Curiosity itself is incredibly advanced from a computer standpoint, with the most powerful processors and latest cameras. But you’d be wrong. Believe it or not, the computer powering the rover is about as good as a PowerMac G3 made by Apple in the 90s, and the cameras are inferior to an iSight camera you’d find a Macbook Pro from today, OSXDaily reports.
ExtremeTech calls it a ‘Airport Extreme on wheels’, as it also shares many specs with Apple’s router. They are:
- PowerPC 750 CPU running at 200Mhz, known as the G3 by Mac users
- 256MB of RAM
- 2GB flash storage (SSD)
- 17 1600×1200 (2-megapixel) cameras
- VxWorks operating system, which also powers the Apple Extreme Wireless routers
So even the OS is shared with an Apple product, while the equivalent cameras can probably be bought for under $15 each on Amazon. So, lasers and expensive gadgets excluded, it’s easy to make a Curiosity Rover. All you need is large remote control car, a second hand Powermac G3 (or AIrport Extreme) and over a dozen cheap 2MP webcams. Sounds like a really fun and tempting project!
If you want more technical details, give the ExtremeTech article a read, as it’s worth it. But it’s definitely interesting to know that space computers aren’t as advanced as you might think.
