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Building bikes: it’s not rocket science
Actually, it is. Sort of.
At the trade-only Core bike show, held in Northamptonshire earlier this week, Chris Hewings, European sales director of the American Bicycle Group, let slip that Litespeed was making the legs for the latest NASA Mars lander.
“There aren’t many companies that can work with such thin titanium tubes,” said Hewings.
Litespeed, now owned by ABG, was born in the early 1990s, growing out of Southeast Machine, a ti-specialist which made underground tanks for liquid gun powder for US government agencies.
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, launched on 4th August last year and will land in the far north of Mars on 25th May.
It will use a robotic digging arm and other instruments during a three-month period to investigate whether icy soil of the Martian arctic could have ever been a favorable environment for microbial life. The solar-powered lander will also look for clues about the history of the water in the ice and will monitor weather as northern Mars’ summer progresses toward fall.
It will then go on a Grand Tour of Mars, notching up PB’s and palmares as it goes.