NASA’s new polar rover has been taken for a test spin on the icy tundra of Greenland. The robot performed admirably in one of the Earth’s toughest climates.

The robot known as GROVER, which stands for both Greenland Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research, was designed by engineering students attending boot camps in 2010 and 2011. Built to carry a ground-penetrating radar to analyse layers of snow and ice, the rover was later turned over to NASA for some fine-tuning.

One of the main goals of the test in Greenland was to prove that the robot could execute commands sent over an Iridium satellite connection - an objective GROVER accomplished.

"When we saw it moving and travelling to the locations our professor had keyed in from Boise, we knew all of our hard work had paid off," said Gabriel Trisca, a graduate student who has been involved in the GROVER project from its start, "GROVER has grown to be a fully-autonomous, GPS-guided and satellite-linked platform for scientific research." Trisca was one of a small team of students who accompanied the robot to Greenland.

The robot is no lightweight, weighing in at over 350 kilograms, it managed to defy near 50km/hour winds in temperatures below minus 5 degrees to run diagnoses of its position and movement tracking systems.