An Interest In:
Web News this Week
- April 16, 2024
- April 15, 2024
- April 14, 2024
- April 13, 2024
- April 12, 2024
- April 11, 2024
- April 10, 2024
NASA's RASSOR robot shape-shifts to haul lunar soil, help make fuel and water
NASA believes our return to the Moon could be sustained by extracting water from the lunar soil to produce air and even fuel. But how to get large amounts of that soil without bringing heavy, failure-prone machinery? The agency's RASSOR (pronounced "razor") excavator robot might do the trick. Rather than wield big scoops, it has a pair of arm-mounted drums that can change the robot's profile and dig with far more efficiency than RASSOR's 100-pound weight would usually allow, using one drum as a grip. The robot's sheer flexibility is also key to its working for the estimated five years of NASA's plans: if the crawler ever overturns or gets caught, it can flip over and keep the main treads out of the ground while clearing out soil-related jams. There's enough refinement needed that a RASSOR 2 follow-up should be in testing around early 2014, but the sequel will be close enough to the ideal design that long-term Moon missions could have the little hauler as a passenger.
Filed under: Robots
Via: Gizmag
Source: NASA
Original Link: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/29/nasa-rassor-excavator-robot-shape-shifts-to-haul-lunar-soil/
Engadget
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics. Engadget was launched in March of 2004 in partnership with the Weblogs, Inc. Network (WIMore About this Source Visit Engadget