You Won't Believe What This Teen Built In Her Garage

A sister act in North Carolina has proven that age is no obstacle when it comes to building a Mars rover.

Working out of their home garage, 13-year-old Camille Beatty and her sister Genevieve, 11, built a functioning robot modeled after NASA's now-deceased Mars rover Spirit.

The girls designed, developed and built the scale-model rover with the help of their father, Robert Beatty. Their mechanical creation will be unveiled Saturday (Aug. 10) as part of an interactive Mars exhibit at the New York Hall of Science in New York City.

"I started taking things apart: remotes, little remote-controlled cars, little clocks," Camille Beatty told SPACE.com. "It amazed me how it all fit together, and it made a loop, a circuit. I would ask my dad questions: 'What does this red wire mean? What does this black wire mean? What happens if they touch?' The more I asked questions, the more we got into it together."

After working with the simple circuits for a while, the Beattys started building robots when Camille was 11 years old. Since that time, the family has created about 12 to 15 bots from their home in Asheville, N.C.

Camille, Genevieve and Robert will visit the New York Hall of Science Saturday (Aug. 10) to demonstrate their Mars rover, which was commissioned by officials from the museum earlier this year.