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"Autonomous operations are critical for the success, safety, and crew survival of NASA deep space missions beyond low Earth orbit, including Gateway." Building on our team’s prior work in the on-body miniaturized robotic swarm, we propose a suite of autonomous robotic swarms for spacecraft assembly and external servicing in lunar orbit.
Each robot is equipped with four magnetic wheels, which enable the robot to attach to any magnetic surface. We tested the mobility of all robots on different materials in a microgravity environment.
The robots showed good mobility on surfaces made up of different materials (rough surfaces, beta cloth simulant, steel, and aluminum with magnetic paint). The robot can overcome obstacles with an angle up to 80 degrees.
A tiny AstroAnt robot will be sent to the moon.
This robot will be working on the top surface of the LunarOutpost MAPP-1 rover. Equipped with a thermopile, the AstroAnt robot can take contactless temperature measurement of the top surface of the MAPP-1 rover, where the radiator of the thermal system is.