A robot has built a structure in space without any help of astronauts. The first-of-its-kind achievement is a step towards autonomous in-orbit manufacturing and assembly of structures such as space stations and data centres, which will be crucial if we want to develop an orbital economy.
at the California Institute of Technology and his team developed their robot as part of a US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiative to explore new ways to build in space. Large orbiting structures in the past have either been assembled with the help of astronauts or launched pre-assembled and folded up, spring-loaded to unfold upon release from their capsules.
But unfolding doesn鈥檛 work for more complex structures, and sending astronauts to build space stations isn鈥檛 cost-effective. 鈥淲e鈥檝e been unfolding things in space, there鈥檚 been a lot of unfolding,鈥� says Pellegrino. 鈥淭he big picture is how are we going to transition from unfolding in space to building in space.鈥�
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The is essentially a sophisticated arm that picks up parts and clicks them together in a process similar to putting up a tent or playing with a toy construction set. The precision involved in the movements makes this more difficult than one might expect, especially because the researchers only had 18 months to take the whole project from idea to execution in orbit.
Since its March launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, the robot has been working on building a radio antenna, 1.4 metres in diameter, from a set of tubes, joints and reflective nets. As it went along, images of each step were beamed back to Earth, where the researchers checked them and troubleshot any problems with an identical robot in their lab. Construction of the antenna hasn鈥檛 quite been completed and the mission ends in December, but work has proceeded far enough to prove that this is a viable approach, says Pellegrino.
Now that it has had its first test, Pellegrino hopes that other researchers and space-flight businesses get onboard to accelerate development of faster, larger assembly systems. 鈥淚 think our objective should be that in the next 5 years we start doing some of this, and in 10 years, there is the beginning for a real maturing infrastructure,鈥� he says.
Eventually, the goal is to build much larger structures, with less troubleshooting from the ground.
Taking space-based construction out of human hands could accelerate the development of businesses and science in orbit enormously, and putting together one radio antenna in space is just the beginning.
