New NASA Lunar Robots testing On Earthen Moonscape

June 17, 2008

Conditions on the moon will be harsher, but prototype NASA automatic vehicles braved smooth storms and unprecedented temperature swings this month on sand dunes near Moses Lake, Wash. to arrange for impending astral expeditions. Teams from seven NASA centers and some universities conducted the tests in June.

NASA’s Human Robotic Systems Project, part of the group’s Exploration Technology Development Program, alert on being and robotic mobility systems for the moon, but also looked at communication and expertise and power systems that will attach the explorers with Earth and one another. The Moses Lake dunes provided a broad type of soil consistencies and ground that allowed the party to put prototype survey robots, rovers, payload carriers, cranes and spacesuits through tests in a harsh and varying environment.

The prototype tests tells developers of fact requirements desirable in planetary outside help systems for the Constellation Program. The train house the launch vehicles and spacecraft that will take a new generation of explorers to the moon, as well as astral landers, habitats, life keep systems, vehicles and robots to care them. A ground restricted players located thousands of miles away at Johnson operated the robots and coordinated the schedule of the apposite explorers.

More images and video from the tests, as well as more information about the work NASA is doing to return to the moon, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration


Giant Lunar Robots could carry NASA lunar bases on their backs

April 24, 2008

NASA engineers are testing a giant, six foot robot may rebound, and made the future moon base thousands of kilometres entire surface of the moon, the astronauts to explore the area around far more than just landing site.

In 2005 the report on its exploration plan, NASA said that they hope to set up a base in fixed locations on the Moon, human beings are the first elections in 2020.

However, the huge robot vehicle called the athletes (all-terrain hex legs in extra-curricular ground Explorer) will probably change. Measuring about 7.5 metres wide, with more than 600 meters long legs, the robot can take action, basically like a turtle, carrying astronauts around the living quarters on its back.

This is the design engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, United States, are also testing two small-scale prototype robot.

15 tons of astronauts living quarters, or habitat, can be installed in the athletes before, sent to the moon, the moon landing. This will solve a major problem for NASA – how to enhance the Habitat well-off landing, the cargo area, can sit down to six meters above the ground, and set it in an ideal position.

Athletes of the wheels of a nuclear warhead so long legs, “This is just the right measures to take off, and payload anywhere you want, said:” Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Brian Wilcox of the persons in charge of athletes项