The robot consists of two snowmobile tracks and two solar panels.
It's not a robot for the sake of building a robot. But it's a robot for science.
The climate is changing and snow is really important
because it reflects a lot of the energy and heat from the sun.
Places like Greenland which are covered in snow are very important.
It's a large area of the earth's surface that's reflecting energy.
Our main concern and main motivation to come over here was to be able to test it in the extreme environment,
and temperature is definitely one of the most difficult issues.
One thing is to be testing it in a controlled environment
in a university, and a completely different thing is to come up here.
When you get up here at -30 Celsius the wires, they just break in the cold, their so brittle.
Biggest challenge was definitely trying to
solve problems in the field.
Out here when something breaks five miles out in the middle of the ice,
it's very difficult to get the tools out and stay warm
enough to be able to perform the repairs.
We had to kinda go in shifts, work for a little bit, and then put your hands
back in the gloves, or swing them, or put them in your armpits, or something.
Warm them up, take a break.
A repair that would take 10 minutes in normal conditions in a warehouse or a shop,
it would take hours out there.
What else could it be?
Quick test - backwards first.
Yes, we could have failed but we made it.
It was kind of magic, to see it happen
to see GROVER moving, every single time he went. It was great.
GROVER represents the ability to collect an enormous amount of data.
It would really revolutionize how much information
we can get about the ice sheet on Greenland.
It's really important to track the changes here.