On Friday an astronaut on ISS controlled and steered a rover on Earth.
On Friday an astronaut on ISS controlled and steered a rover on Earth.
While zipping around Earth several hundred miles above the planet’s surface, European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano drove a 220-pound (100 kilograms) rover across a moon-mimicking landscape here at NASA’s Ames Research Center, even ordering the robot to deploy a simulated film-based radio telescope antenna.
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On Friday an astronaut on ISS controlled and steered a rover on Earth.
While zipping around Earth several hundred miles above the planet’s surface, European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano drove a 220-pound (100 kilograms) rover across a moon-mimicking landscape here at NASA’s Ames Research Center, even ordering the robot to deploy a simulated film-based radio telescope antenna.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
I thought we already did this from planet to planet. You know, the mars rovers.
Why is NASA wasting time and money trying to prove something they already know works?
This experiment was not quite the same as controlling a rover on Mars from JPL on Earth. Having an astronaut do it on ISS means the infrastructure the astronaut uses has to be much simpler than that on Earth, much more portable and lightweight so it can get to ISS. To achieve that is important engineering that must be learned.
Thus, I wouldn’t dismiss this test as a waste.
So they built a full size rover and moon simulation test range just to test a new digital transceiver?
They didn’t need the moon simulation area or the actual remote control car. They could have tested the radio by just monitoring its digital input/output.
Everything else was off the shelf stuff used everyday all day.
I can see testing the radio. But going through the extra expense of making full size operational mock-ups and running it around on a full size simulated moon is a bit over the top.
Unless they already had the robot and moon mock-up sitting around unused then I retract my opinion.
But so far all I see is a few engineers putting together a big test just to make their work look more important than it really is.
Purpose of this is to show astronauts in orbit above the Moon could control robots producing propellant on the Moon. But to transport that propellant up to orbit you would need landers/ascent vehicles. Then why not make those landers also able to carry a crew module?
Bob Clark