It may seem like it's straight out of a science fiction story, but director of NASA's Ames Research Center recently suggested in an interview with H+ magazine that researchers could use nanotechnology to build self-replicating robots on Mars, according to Slashdot."If we really want to settle Mars, and we don't want to have to carry millions of tons of equipment with us to duplicate the way we live on Earth, these technologies will be key," Peter Worden said in the interview. He added in the article that the self-replicating robots could survey Mars for underground microbes while protecting the unique Martian biosphere, since it could hint at our own planet's beginnings.
The question, Worden asked, is whether we could take existing microbes--self-replicating robots, in a sense--and engineer them to do other things. On a related note, the report said that the possibility of underground microbes already on Mars has only increased, given the recent discoveries of carbon and water.
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