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!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the 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. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
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