It’s been decades in the works, but an honest to goodness robotic space plane is about to make it to orbit. The X-37B is a demonstration vehicle designed for testing in space, and will be launched next month on top of an Atlas V rocket. It’s 27 feet long, 15 feet wide, weighs 5 tons, and that’s about all we know at this point. A bit confusingly, the X-37 was developed from the X-40, a smaller air-dropped gliding demonstrator that had its first flight back in 1998.

It’s worth noting that this is a US Air Force project, not a NASA project. In fact, the branch of the air force that is working on the X-37B is the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, whose mission is “to expedite development and fielding of select Department of Defense combat support and weapon systems by leveraging defense-wide technology development efforts and existing operational capabilities.” Understandably, this has prompted a few concerns. More, after the jump. (Read more…)

Poor Spirit. I do so wish there was something we could do. $16 from ThinkGeek, and zero percent of the proceeds go to the Bring Spirit Home fund. Incidentally, here’s the latest update on Spirit:

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit is now parked for the winter. The rover team is commanding Spirit this week to make additional preparations for the Mars southern hemisphere winter season. The team does not plan further motion of the wheels until spring comes to Spirit’s location beside the western edge of a low plateau called Home Plate.

Spirit will spend the coming winter tilted 9 degrees toward the south, an unfavorable attitude for the solar panels to catch rays from the sun in the northern sky. Spirit’s parking positions for its previous three Martian winters tilted northward. Engineers anticipate that, due to the unfavorable tilt for this fourth winter, Spirit will be out of communication with Earth for several months.

Spirit may enter a low-power hibernation mode within a few weeks, shutting down almost all functions except keeping a master clock running and checking its power status periodically until it has enough power to reawaken. It may go in and out of this mode a few times at the beginning and at the end of an extended hibernation period.

I’m not going to buy this shirt for the simple reason that wearing it would keep me on the verge of tears all the time. Proud tears, but still, that would totally ruin the manly image that I am so used to projecting.

Poor little robot :’(

[ ThinkGeek ]

This badass looking android is Robonaut 2, a joint project of NASA and General Motors. Robonaut 2 is an evolution of Robonaut 1, who was spawned by NASA and DARPA and had an ATV for legs. R2 emulates the upper torso of a human, and is designed to work closely with humans using the same tools that humans use. GM, for its part, is interested in advanced industrial robots:

“For GM, this is about safer cars and safer plants,” said Alan Taub, GM’s vice president for global research and development. “When it comes to future vehicles, the advancements in controls, sensors and vision technology can be used to develop advanced vehicle safety systems. The partnership’s vision is to explore advanced robots working together in harmony with people, building better, higher quality vehicles in a safer, more competitive manufacturing environment.”

You have to wonder, though, whether creating a robot that looks and functions like a human is really the best way to do it. There already is a robot in space: Dextre. Dextre doesn’t look especially human, but he has two 3 meter long arms, each with seven offset joints, which is a couple more than we’ve got last time I counted. I understand that a robot that emulates a human in form and function will likely be more intuitive to control, but there may be some compromise when it comes to capabilities and options.

Now, I’m a huge fan of human spaceflight. I don’t think there’s any substitute for the inspiration afforded by having members of our species leave our planet. That being said, while I don’t know what the exact numbers are, I imagine that the cost and effort of sending a human into space is split something like 5% science, 95% making sure that they don’t die. This isn’t exactly the most efficient path to discovery. Of course, that 5% science may be 100% stuff that only humans can do in person, but I really do think that robots are the practical future of space exploration 95% of the time. I want humans to travel to Mars… Heck, I want to be one of them. But realistically, in the short term, I think our limited resources are better spent on intrepid robots like Spirit, Opportunity, and Cassini.

[ Robonaut 2 ] VIA [ Engadget ]

Spirit, you were a good rover. You were a great rover. You did your job, and more. There was never any doubt as to whether you’d be staying on Mars, but nearly two thousand days of operation instead of ninety? Incredible.

Spirit isn’t done yet, but unfortunately, she might be getting close… NASA has officially given up attempts to extricate the rover from deep sand and has declared her a stationary science platform. In the next few weeks, small movements will be made to try and orient Spirit’s solar panels more favorably toward the south, in the hopes that they will be able to generate enough power to keep Spirit alive through the Martian winter.

If Spirit makes it, she could continue to do valuable scientific work for months or even years:

“There’s a class of science we can do only with a stationary vehicle that we had put off during the years of driving,” said Steve Squyres, a researcher at Cornell University and principal investigator for Spirit and Opportunity. “Degraded mobility does not mean the mission ends abruptly. Instead, it lets us transition to stationary science.”

One stationary experiment Spirit has begun studies tiny wobbles in the rotation of Mars to gain insight about the planet’s core. This requires months of radio-tracking the motion of a point on the surface of Mars to calculate long-term motion with an accuracy of a few inches.

“If the final scientific feather in Spirit’s cap is determining whether the core of Mars is liquid or solid, that would be wonderful — it’s so different from the other knowledge we’ve gained from Spirit,” said Squyres.

Tools on Spirit’s robotic arm can study variations in the composition of nearby soil, which has been affected by water. Stationary science also includes watching how wind moves soil particles and monitoring the Martian atmosphere.

We’re all pulling you ya back here on Earth, Spirit.

Meanwhile, Opportunity is doing just fine, heading towards a very young crater called Concepcion at a blistering pace of about 200 feet per day. Stuck or not, these little rovers never cease to amaze me.

[ Press Release ]
Comic VIA [ xkcd ]

First, the good news (maybe): there’s a remote chance that the Phoenix lander, which has been frozen without power up at the north pole of Mars since November 2008, might thaw itself out, wake up again, and phone home now that spring (with warmer temperatures and additional sunlight) has come to the Martian arctic. Phoenix was not designed to deal with the winter on Mars, and missions scientists “do not expect Phoenix to have survived.” But the Mars Odyssey orbiter will be listening for signals from Phoenix from now through March just in case.

Updates can be found on the Phoenix mission website.

Now the not so good news… The Spirit Mars rover has been stuck in loose sand since May of last year. Despite methodical (but valiant) attempts to free the rover, not much progress has been made. Currently, the rover’s solar panels are tilted far enough away from the sun that if nothing is done, Spirit will run out of power by May. Both the right front wheel and right rear wheel of the six wheeled rover are non-functional, and recent attempts to get the rover out over the past few weeks have resulted in just over 2.5 inches of movement. Ideas like using the robot’s arm to push some rocks under the wheels to gain traction have been considered and rejected, since there’s a risk of compromising the science payload, and even if the rover is completely stuck, there’s still potential for stationary science. They’re running out of things to try, but nobody has given up hope entirely quite yet… And it’s important to keep in mind that the rovers were designed to operate for 90 days, and they’ve just made it to six years.

You can follow along at JPL’s Free Spirit website.

The nice thing about robots in space is that there’s no gravity, so you don’t have to worry about things like weight and balance. The annoying thing about robots is space is that there’s no gravity, so orientation and control is a problem. MIT has had a set of robots called SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient Experimental Satellites) on board the International Space Station since May of 2006 to test out algorithms for autonomous navigation and docking maneuvers. Each sphere is about 8″ in diameter and has 18 sides. They gets around with 12 thrusters powered by compressed CO2, while ultrasonic and infrared sensors and a wireless link tell them where they are. SPHERES are able to maneuver precisely enough to dance around in a circle on the ISS; watch as a third robot enters the pattern:

The idea behind SPHERES is that a bunch of small satellites working together is much cheaper, much more efficient, and much more robust than one single large satellite. It’s swarm robotics, up in space.

[ NASA ] and [ MIT Spheres ] VIA [ Danger Room ]

Spirit, one of the two rovers currently on Mars, has been stuck in the sand for about six months now, and the prognosis is not great. After months of testing here on Earth, engineers have started sending commends to the poor little rover, and it actually looks like Spirit is starting to dig its way out. The picture above shows the tiny bit of progress, which is about 100x less far than the rover would have moved had it followed the move command it was sent without being stuck. But progress is still progress, and another similar move has been planned. JPL is trying not to be too optimistic, though: “Extrication drives are expected to make slow, if any, progress in coming weeks, and the probability of success in escaping from Troy is uncertain.” We’ll keep you updated.

[ Free Spirit ]
[ Press Release ]

GetRobo has the scoop on a presentation made by Toyota executives entitled “Realization of Moon Exploration Using Advanced Robots by 2020.” Sending robots to the moon is certainly not a new idea, but slick looking humanoid robots? Building rock gardens and doing calligraphy? I guess the robots can do whatever they want once they get there, and Toyota has some fairly specific ideas on hardware and capabilities:

-joints are protected from regolith

-small capacity solar battery onboard

-internal status shows on screen on chest

-arms exchangeable for different tasks

-able to jump with springs in legs

-keeps warm during night covered in metal cloak

There isn’t a lot of detail beyond the info here, but I’d say it’s certainly possible to have bots like this in 2020 based on the current capabilities of Toyota’s partner robots. The first robots back to the moon might look more like this, but Toyota has a real shot at the solar system record for lunar calligraphy.

VIA [ GetRobo ]

Gravity suck. Gravity especially sucks when you’re trying to get into orbit. It sucks because vehicles like the space shuttle expend most of their energy just hauling along the fuel they need to make it into orbit, instead of something useful like more payload or myself. Like, I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that the space shuttle could lift off with no trouble using just its main engines; the boosters are needed primarily to lift the external fuel tank. This is why Virgin Galactic launched SpaceShipOne from an airplane, why NASA is investigating launching satellites directly from high altitude balloons, and why an elevator to space that’s powered from the ground would be the best thing for spaceflight since Ham.

Freely admitting that they’re not up to the task of designing such an elevator (either the car or the tether, which has to be about 62,000 miles long), NASA has opened it up to everybody as part of their Centennial Challenges. This week, a bunch of different robots competed to climb a kilometer into the sky using only power transmitted from the ground by lasers so powerful that they have to turn them off when satellites fly overhead. The winner zipped up the tether at nearly 4 meters per second netting a prize of almost $1 million, which is pretty good, even though at that speed, it would take just under a year to make it into geosynchronous orbit. The point is, these robots don’t have to lift any fuel: with the engine on the ground, it’s all payload.

This isn’t the only way to power a craft remotely with a laser. Check out a vehicle that uses pulsed plasma propulsion, including a laser that makes air spontaneously explode, after the jump. (Read more…)

We know a little bit more about Saturn’s moon Titan since Cassini’s probe Huygens managed to land on its icy surface and snap some incredible pictures, and the evidence for things like hydrocarbon oceans and cryovolcanoes has made a follow-up mission near certain. There have been a variety of long duration proposals, and the coolest ones involve robot balloons and sailing boats.

One of the mission proposals that includes a little sailing boat is called TiME (as in, “it’s TiME for Titan”), which stands for Titan Mare Explorer (mare being scientist-speak for “something that kinda looks ocean-y”). If approved, TiME would launch in January of 2015 and reach Titan in June of 2022, landing in a lake called Ligeia Mare which is about the size of South Korea. Once there, it’ll cruise around the lake, its chief objective being to study the methane cycle on Titan, which is thought to be analogous to the water cycle here on Earth. Solar power won’t be an option (since it’ll be raining methane most of the time), but TiME will be powered by an Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator, which should let it cruise for 14 years or so.

Balloons are also a good option for Titan, since they can cover so much territory without having to worry about getting stuck. Another proposal, called the Titan Saturn System Mission, includes both a little battery powered boat and a hot air balloon that’s designed to spend six months circumnavigating the entire moon:

At the moment, no decision has been made on the next mission to Titan, but whatever it is, it looks like it’s gonna be fun.

[ Presentation on TiME (*.PDF) ]
[ TSSM ]
VIA [ AUVSI ] and [ The Register ]