I’d say that the craziest way of landing a rover on Mars is still the giant airbag bouncing and rolling method, but the ‘Sky Crane’ system that’ll be setting Curiosity down on the red planet in 2012 is pretty nuts. The above video shows the first test of Curiosity (or rather, the test model of the rover) deploying from the Sky Crane system, which gives a good idea of how the final landing is going to work.

On Mars, the Sky Crane will be supporting itself using rockets, and when Curiosity hits the ground, the cabling will detach from the crane using a set of pyros. The Sky Crane then flies off and crashes somewhere (sad), while Curiosity gets busy exploring. Here’s a rendering of the process:

This first test bodes well, but it’s still going to be a pretty hairy thing, and I’m going to keep my fingers and toes preemptively crossed between now and the landing just in case.

This just in: trying to touch type with crossed fingers is bizarre and doesn’t work.

[ Curiosity ]

Legged robots offer a lot more flexibility than wheeled robots do when it comes to moving over uneven terrain, like the types of surfaces you might expect to find on the moon. As the Apollo astronauts discovered, however, walking on the moon is much easier said than done, and the most effective bipedal gait turned out to be a sort of robot-unfriendly bouncy trotting run.

While low gravity sounds like it would be great for walking robots (easier on the motors, more time to recover), it’s actually not ideal, since the robot would spend most of its time not in direct contact with the ground as it tried to move. And running like the human astronauts did wouldn’t be much better because of the difficulty of keeping the robot consistently stable. Researchers at Waseda University in Tokyo have developed a computer model that suggests a new way for lunar robots to get around: jumping. Based on the model, the most stable and efficient way for a bipedal robot like their WABIAN-2R to conquer the moon would be with a series of foot-together, one meter high jumps.

Japan, if you remember, is already planning to put humanoid robots on the moon by 2020 to do some rock gardening. This is totally cool, but when it comes down to it, a humanoid might not be the best platform for planetary exploration. Yes, humanoids are better than wheeled robots in certain situations, but there are plenty of designs that offer most of the adaptability of legs while preserving the efficiency and stability of a wheeled platform. Giant mutant PackBot, anyone?

[ WABIAN-2R ] VIA [ New Scientist ]

You remember that 51 robots t-shirt? The same guys who came up with that have a new one featuring 21 space exploring robots, including one of my favorite space robots of all time, Mars Global Surveyor, which provided a huge number of spectacular pictures of the surface of Mars and helped me write my thesis. Yes, that link goes to a PDF of my thesis. It’s 367 pages. Read it, I dare you.

The shirt is on pre-order for $22, with $5 of that going to The Planetary Society (a good cause) to help further the exploration of space.

[ Chop Shop ]

Damn, that is one big Mars rover… Fully loaded, it’ll weigh nearly 2000 pounds. On Earth, anyway. To keep itself running, Curiosity won’t depend on solar panels, which is a good thing, since they tend to get covered in dust, and you can’t always count on a Martian tornado to clean them off, even if it does happen occasionally. Instead, Curiosity uses a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which turns decaying non-weapons-grade plutonium into electricity. Lots of electricity. Over a long time. The RTG is designed to output 125 watts, which will gradually decline to only 100 watts… After 14 years. The rover itself probably won’t last that long, but after all, that’s what everybody said about Opportunity, who is now on mission day 2369 out of 90.

[ MSL ]

PASADENA, Calif. — The rover Curiosity, which NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission will place on Mars in August 2012, has been rolling over ramps in a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to test its mobility system. The suspension system on NASA Mars rover Curiosity easily accommodates rolling over a ramp in this Sept. 10, 2010, test drive inside the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Curiosity uses the same type of six-wheel, rocker-bogie suspension system as previous Mars rovers, for handling uneven terrain during drives. Its wheels are half a meter (20 inches) in diameter, twice the height of the wheels on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers currently on Mars.

Pimpin’. Those Martians gonna be jealous.

[ JPL ]

Now Curiosity‘s got something to smack those pesky Martians upside da head with. And, you know, for doing, like, science experiments and stuff.

[ MSL ]

That’s not my headline. That’s JPL’s headline. And when JPL talks about something busting a move, you know it’s gonna be good. This robot is called ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer), and although we first wrote about it over two years ago, it’s great to see an update. This latest version of ATHLETE actually consists of two entirely independent three-limbed robots that attach to each side of a cargo pallet and then operate as a single system. The wheels may look small, but ATHLETE is designed to traverse pretty much any terrain on Earth (or any other planet); if its wheels get stuck, it just uses its limbs and starts to walk. The limbs also function as arms: on the inside of each axle is a quick-disconnect adapter that can select a tool off of the base of the robot to let it do things like sample collection or even construction. Look for ATHLETEs in the near future (let’s hope) on the lunar or Martian surface, helping to unload and transport cargo over challenging terrain.

[ ATHLETE ]

In what probably isn’t a tribute to Spirit (which drove backwards from March of 2006 on due to a broken wheel) Curiosity took its first drive test on Friday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where it’s undergoing assembly. Powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, the SUV-sized rover will be carrying a much larger science payload than the current Mars rovers are able to. Scheduled to arrive on Mars in August of 2012, Spirit is now officially one meter closer to its destination.

One meter down, only 188,500,000,000 meters to go.

[ MSL ] VIA [ Discover ]

The Mars Science Laboratory rover, aka Curiosity, is currently undergoing assembly and testing. Scheduled for a 2011 launch, Curiosity is way bigger, and capable of a lot more science, than either little Sojourner or not-so-little Opportunity (which is still going, by the way).

It must be pretty stressful to be an engineer working on MSL, knowing that at some point you just have to say, “okay, looks good” and then the robot takes off for Mars and there’s nothing more you can do, ever. And for better or worse, Spirit and Opportunity have set some pretty high (I’m not sure whether to say “unrealistic”) standards for durability and performance. I’m optimistic, though, and as long as the crazy landing scheme works out, MSL has tons of potential. Video of the robotic “skycrane” that’ll set Curiosity down on the surface of Mars, after the jump. (Read more…)

NASA’s Centennial Challenges are technology development contests open to anyone, kinda like the DARPA challenges. This means that if you (you!) have a good idea as to how to go about solving one of the problems they present, you have just as good a chance as anyone else at snagging one of the prizes. Here are the three new challenges for 2010:

The Nano-Satellite Launch Challenge: to place a small satellite into Earth orbit, twice in one week. The prize purse is $2 million. The goals of this challenge are to stimulate innovations in low-cost launch technology and encourage creation of commercial nano-satellite delivery services.

Night Rover Challenge: to demonstrate a solar-powered exploration vehicle that can operate in darkness using its own stored energy. The prize purse is $1.5 million. The objective is to stimulate innovations in energy storage technologies of value in extreme space environments, such as the surface of the moon, or for electric vehicles and renewable energy systems on Earth.

Sample Return Robot Challenge: to demonstrate a robot that can locate and retrieve geologic samples from a wide and varied terrain without human control. The prize purse is $1.5 million. The objectives are to encourage innovations in automatic navigation and robotic manipulator technologies.

NASA’s budget for these challenges has been increased to $10 million per year through 2015, so hopefully we’ll see even more of them. As I’ve said before (relating to an earlier NASA challenge), this system seems like such a great way to spur creativity and innovation, especially considering what a huge return can be had on what (for a government agency) is more or less a trivial sum.

[ NASA ]