The absolute
least efficient way to get air, water and fuel
into space is the way that we currently do it: by packing as much of it
as we can into rockets on Earth, and then firing it off into orbit. If
this is how we have to get supplies to the moon, or
Mars, it's going to be ludicrously expensive and time-consuming.
A much better solution is to extract everything that we need from wherever we are: where there's ice (the
moon,
Mars and asteroids all have it), there's water, air with a bit of work,
and with a bit more work, rocket fuel. Plus, there are likely other
valuable resources scattered around all over the place, like minerals
and metals. So, great, let's get on it! But first, we've got to find the
stuff. And how is NASA going to do that? Robots.
The process of robotic mining itself is well established on Earth, and NASA holds an annual
Robotic Mining Competition
to help drive university-level research and innovation with robots
competing to mine the most simulated Martian regolith (aka dirt).
Even private companies are working on off-world mining robots. The mining hardware is a work in progress, but
prospecting
for the good stuff (water, ice, minerals, metals, helium-3, etc.) is
more difficult. We can get a sense of generally where resources are
concentrated using multispectral imaging from orbit (or from aerial
platforms, where atmosphere is available), but finding the best specific
little spot to start digging requires exploration and sensing at a much
finer resolution.
In order to figure out the best way to do this, NASA is taking
inspiration from some of the finest natural engineers on Earth that
aren't beavers. Or termites. Well, they're decent engineers, I guess:
ants. Or even if they're
not the finest natural engineers on
Earth, they're great at using the fact that there are a whooole bunch of
them (something in the 300 quadrillion range) to locate and exploit
sources of food in their environment.
NASA's "Swarmies" robots are designed and programmed to forage
like ants do. Each individual robot has basic hardware and follows a
simple set of rules, and when it finds something interesting (a barcode
on the ground, in this case, but you can slap whatever sensor package on
them that you want), the robot calls over all its Swarmie friends to
come help it out.
The current incarnation of this system only uses four robots,
but it's been designed with scalability in mind, and it'll work for all
different kinds of hardware. All of the benefits of
swarm robotics
apply here: you can deploy lots and lots of small, cheap robots that
can work together to efficiently perform much of the work that would
take one big, expensive robot a very long time to execute. And if you
lose one or two individuals out of your swarm to mechanical issues,
moonquakes, Marsnadoes, asteroid impacts, meteor impacts, meteoroid
impacts, meteorite impacts, rogue AI takeovers, alien abductions,
climate change, budget cuts, untrustworthy Nigerian princes, or an
attack on the Deep Space Network by crazed wombats, the mission will
still likely succeed. Hooray!
Next, NASA will add some robots to the mix that actually do
know how to get some work done. The plan is to incorporate RASSOR, "a
concept robotic vehicle evaluating designs for a future craft that could
work on another world."
Get more from IEEE Spectrum
end quote from:
Discovery News - 2 days ago
NASA is testing robots that will work together to find minerals, metals and more in space.
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Each robot has basic hardware and follows a simple set of rules. When it finds something interesting, it calls over all its Swarmie friends.Dmitri Gerondidakis/NASA
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