NASA has teamed up with New York hardware startup LittleBits to launch a space kit that lets you build your own Mars rover in a school or university lab or at home.
The kit comes with 12 “bit modules” that provide power, remote triggering, light sensing and motorization.
In partnership with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, LittleBits also offers 10 activities that allow users to build everything from satellite dishes to miniature Mars rovers.
“Wired” magazine quoted LittleBits founder and CEO Ayah Bdeir as saying: “Our mission is to enable anyone to create their own hardware, making playing with electronics more like playing with Lego bricks.”
Bdeir added: “We go into an area at a time when the technology is prevalent, but people don’t really understand it, and then we break it down and give people the bricks so they can get involved.”
LittleBits sells kits of circuit blocks that snap together with magnets, requiring no soldering, wiring, or programming, and can be combined into millions of different gadgets, from synthesizers to remote control cars.
“It’s about starting small and building the complexity into what people want,” Bdeir said. “It’s a very effective way to learn.”
The kit costs $189 (Rs. 11,300) and you can buy it online from the LittleBits website.
Prepared with inputs from IANS