Mars Rovers' New York and 9/11 Connections

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November 7, 2004<br /><b>Martian Robots, Taking orders<br />From a Manhattan Walk-Up</b><br />By KENNETH CHANG <br /> <br /><i>Below are exerpts from the article. The full article is at</i> http://www.nytimes.com/pages/science/index.html<br /> <br />These days, when one of NASA's rovers drills a hole in a rock on Mars, the commands come from Lower Manhattan, from a second-floor office on Elizabeth Street, surrounded by dusted-off tenements.<br /><br />This is a street where pushcarts once fed and dressed Italians just off the boat. Now its old storefronts are of-the-moment restaurants and stores, and the only trace of the neighborhood's immigrant past is in its name - NoLIta, North of Little Italy. <br /><br />Above an Erica Tanov designer clothing shop, engineers at Honeybee Robotics built the drilling tools aboard the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which landed some 200 million miles away on Mars in January. And it is from here that they tell the rovers where to drill.<br /><br />"We're writing up some commands to send to Mars, and then we'll go out to get a cup of coffee in NoLIta," said Paul Bartlett, a project engineer at Honeybee. "We're getting casual about it."<br /><br />Stephen Gorevan, Honeybee's founder and chairman, admits that his is an unusual business, even for an evolving neighborhood. "It is almost surreal," he said. "You walk down the street and there are shoe stores, bakeries and here we're controlling some robotic mechanism on Mars."<br /><br />Not that anyone even notices. "We don't get any neighborhood reaction," Mr. Gorevan said. "I thought somebody would wander in from the street once in a while, but it doesn't happen. It doesn't register with people."<br /><br /><br />The scientists name not only every rock, but also separate locations on each rock that they examine. Earlier in the mission, true to the New York twist on this mission, the Honeybee engineers were able to assign the name <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>