AP Scott Kelly, Expedition 26 commander with Robonaut 2, in the Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station on Friday.
R2 will do all the dull and dirty jobs
It sits, fists clenched and arms folded to the chest. Robonaut 2 is ready for action on the space station. The first humanoid robot to go into orbit was carried up to the outpost in February on shuttle Discovery.
The station's astronauts have a list of tasks to work through and booting up their new “housemate” is some way down the schedule.
R2, as it's known for short, is a pioneer for its kind. Fifty years on from Gagarin's historic first for humans, the humanoid machines are following.
The robot's first operations will be very simple: a series of “games” on a board to demonstrate the performance seen on the ground can be replicated in the microgravity conditions experienced on the station.
JD Yamokoski is Robonaut Controls Lead from a company called Oceaneering Space Systems, which is working on the NASA project.
He told me: “Initially, we will be doing system check-out — minor things to earn our stripes.
At first, these will be some free-motion tasks to make sure we don't interact with any objects on station we shouldn't. Then we'll move on to the taskboard. It's got a variety of switches, valves, and knobs, soft materials — the types of things you'd find all over station. We're going to interact with that taskboard and prove we can work with the same things humans work with. And then, over time, we have a series of upgrades we'd like to fly .
“As to the future, R2 will do anything that helps the crew out — all the dull and dirty jobs. For instance, on Saturday mornings the crew spend their time wiping down handrails on station.
There are huge numbers of these rails. So Robonaut could help with the cleaning. We have full 3D models of the inside of the station and there are a number of ways we could program Robonaut to move around.”
They will even stand in for astronauts during spacewalks or for those tasks in space thought too difficult or too dangerous for humans to accomplish.
We often forget that Gagarin, Shepard and their ilk were preceded into Earth orbit by dogs and chimps.
The machines' requirements are fewer in terms of the resources needed to sustain them — they don't want air, food, water, and the very narrow range of warm temperatures demanded by humans.
And, ultimately, the machines are expendable.
They don't have to be returned — a necessity in the case of humans which only adds to the complexity and cost of space missions.