RED, ROUND “TRICORDER” PREPPED FOR SPACE

It’s shaped like a bas­ket­ball. It was inspired by Spock’s tri­corder. And, if NASA researchers have their way, it could be help­ing out astro­nauts aboard the International Space Station in as lit­tle as three years.
The Personal Satellite Assistant is a robot pro­to­type designed to buzz around the space sta­tion, per­form­ing a vari­ety of jobs for astro­nauts and mis­sion con­trollers: mon­i­tor­ing life-​​support sys­tems, keep­ing tabs on the day’s tasks and remind­ing space sci­en­tists how to do their exper­i­ments right.
After six years of devel­op­ment, engi­neers at NASA’s Ames Research Center say they now have a ver­sion of the Personal Satellite Assistant, or PSA, that’s fully mobile, with a sen­sor suite that’s nearly space-​​ready.
But it’s unclear whether the red spher­i­cal bot will ever make it into orbit. Like so much else at the space agency these days, the fate of the PSA remains uncer­tain. The drone’s mak­ers hope to have an answer from the higher-​​ups by the end of the sum­mer.
My Wired News arti­cle has details.
THERE’S MORE: In case the PSA wasn’t sci-​​fi enough for you, con­sider how the pro­to­type drone is built. Or rather, printed. A 3D printer’s laser zaps a vat of plas­tic, con­struct­ing the PSA a tiny layer at a time. When it’s done, the globe rises out of the liq­uid, fully formed. “Pretty cool,” Keith Nicewarner, the project’s lead sys­tem engi­neer, gig­gles.

AND MORE: Then there’s the mat­ter of test­ing the PSA. That’s done in a full-​​scale mockup of the International Space Station’s American wing. Over this, a force-​​feedback gantry crane tan­gles a cable, which holds a gim­bal. The PSA floats inside. The set-​​up sim­u­lates the effects of micro­grav­ity, and allows the ‘bot to buzz around, unen­cum­bered by fric­tion or drag.
AND MORE: Via Xeni and SMZ, here’s a pic­ture of the PSA being tested, circa 2000…

June 10th, 2004 | Space | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.