How to build your own Nasa-approved Mars Rover

The space agency Nasa, in partnership with New York-based hardware startup LittleBits, has launched a space kit that enables you to build your own Mars Rover at a school or college lab or at home.

The kit comes with 12 "bit modules" that provide things like power, remote triggering, light sensing and motorisation.

In collaboration with Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center, LittleBits also came up with 10 activities that allow users to build everything from a satellite dish to a miniature Mars Rover.

"Our mission is to allow anyone to create their own hardware, to make playing with electronics more like playing with Legos," Ayah Bdeir, founder and CEO of LittleBits, was quoted as saying in Wired.

"We're taking one field at a time where technology is prevalent but people don't really understand it, then we're breaking it down and giving people the bricks so they can participate in it," Bdeir added.

LittleBits sells kits of circuit blocks that snap together with magnets - no soldering, wiring, or programming is required - and can be combined to fashion millions of different gadgets, from synthesizers to remote control cars.

"It's about starting small and building complexity as people want it," says Bdeir. "That's a very effective way to learn something."

The kit costs $189 (Rs.11,300) and you can buy it online from the LittleBits website.

Written with inputs from IANS