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Tuesday, March 4, 2003 Carnegie Mellon University Testing Life-Seeking Rover CMU's Rover. Credit: Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University has announced that it is going to test its new rover in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The rover is designed to seek out forms of life using advanced sensors developed at CMU. The Atacama Desert is considered to be an absolute desert, where in many cases it is believed that not even microorganisms can survive. As this is extremely similar to what we believe Martian conditions to be, it is an ideal testing area for this new area of technology. Carnegie Mellon is working up to a fully autonomous model, which will be able to search out any form of life in harsh environments without need for instructions from Earth. The rover will be tested for three years in the desert, and the team is hoping to challenge the limits of what life is able to survive in. Carnegie Mellon University's main campus is located in the Red Colony team's hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (More info: CMU Field Robotics Center) @ 16:25 EST