At NASA, A Quiet Quest to Send a Humanoid Robot to the Moon

NASA originally planned to send humans back to the Moon for $150 billion, but it was deemed too expensive by the Obama administration, and Congress cancelled the program. Instead, for approximately $200 million and $250 million more for a rocket, NASA will be sending a humanoid robot to the Moon, and they plan to accomplish this within a thousand days. This plan is being called Project M, and the top half of the robot, Robonaut 2, exists already and is on a shuttle, Discovery, that will be launched Wednesday. It is headed for the International Space Station and will be the first humanoid robot in space. It will assist with housekeeping chores at the space station as NASA learns how robots and humans can work together. Project M will also be drawing from other planned NASA projects, such as engines using liquid oxygen and methane, a cheap and nontoxic fuel combination, and an automated landing system, that could avoid dangerous landings. Integrating these technologies is actually speeding up development of this robot. However, this NASA project will provide the answer to the question of what NASA will do when there is not enough money for space missions. When the project of sending people to the Moon was cancelled, the robot being sent to the Moon is a compromise between reducing costs and cutting edge science. A robot does not need food, air, and a return trip home. Most of the parts needed for the mission were bartered to cut costs even more. Project M is mostly being considered a technology demonstration and not a scientific mission. The robot’s potential on the Moon is far less than a human’s capability.

This article is important because the humanoid robot could become an important tool in space missions. Certain missions cannot be carried out by humans, and these robots could be used to complete certain dangerous or impossible tasks. It is also possible that the smaller budget and savings of this mission will help convince Congress to allow more funding for the more expensive NASA projects.

While this article is interesting, I felt that the article focused too much on the budget problems of NASA and not enough on the actual mission itself. I enjoyed learning about how NASA bartered for parts at Home Depot and other places, and I would have liked to have learned more about how they got all the rocket parts to work together. Overall, this article was very thought provoking and could be very important to space travel. In the future, a humanoid robot could work together with a human. The article raises these interesting questions: “What is the best way to spur advances in space technologies? And given the costs and dangers, how important is it to send people into space at all?” We do not yet have the answers to these questions.

Citation: Chang, Kenneth. "At NASA, A Quiet Quest To Send a Humanoid Robot to the Moon." NY Times 1 Nov. 2010: Print.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/science/space/02robot.html?_r=1&ref=science&pagewanted=print