Day: July 10, 2023

How do you design a robot that can explore a wide variety of terrain it might encounter on alien planets?

A team from Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has designed a robot that goes way beyond your typical rover and may be the next step in planetary exploration. The four-wheeled Multi-Modal Mobility Morphobot (M4) is designed to autonomously asses its surrounding terrain to determine how to best traverse upcoming obstacles. 

The M4’s unique capabilities combine solutions from hurdles experienced in previous robotic missions on Mars and could provide the innovation needed to anticipate future ones. Rough terrain ahead? No problem. The M4’s four wheels are designed to pivot onto their sides and work as propellers, turning the Morphobot into a quadcopter drone. Obstacle in your way? M4 can stand up using its back two wheels like legs, balancing itself with the rotary thrust of its front propellers as it pivot-walks to a clear path. And using artificial intelligence (AI), M4 is designed to make these determinations autonomously. 

Related: Curiosity rover on Mars gets a brain boost to think (and move) faster

Robotic planetary exploration vehicles, like the wheeled rovers on Mars, are limited to the landscapes they are able to navigate. NASA’s Curiosity rover, for example, has been exploring the Martian surface for eleven years. In that time, the robotic explorer has driven less than twenty miles (32 kilometers) and experienced damage to its wheels within the first several months of its mission. 

NASA’s more recent Mars rover, Perseverance, was sent with a small helicopter companion called Ingenuity. The success of Ingenuity’s flights on the Red Planet prompted NASA to keep the drone-like vehicle operational long past its planned mission in order to help scout routes for Perseverance, providing mission operators valuable insight into the rover’s road ahead. 

M4 could handle all of these tasks on its own thanks to a revolutionary set of capabilities.

“Our aim was to push the boundaries of robot locomotion by designing a system that showcases extraordinary mobility capabilities with a wide range of distinct locomotion modes. The M4 project successfully achieved these objectives,” assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern University Alireza Ramezani said in a Caltech statement. 

Ramezani and Caltech director of Bioinspired Engineering and aeronautics professor Mory Gharib came up the idea for M4, which they developed together with a group at Caltech’s Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies (CAST). Their team consisted of Caltech’s Eric Sihite, an aerospace postdoctoral scholar research associate, CAST design engineer Reza Nemovi and Arash Kalantari, from JPL. 

The group published a paper last month in the journal Nature Communications announcing the robot. The paper cites the locomotive techniques of different animals as the inspiration behind some of M4’s design, such as the Chukar bird, which flap its wings for balance while walking over hilly landscapes. 

“Chukar birds adopt a similar wing repurposing to increase redundancy to support legged locomotion over steep terrain through a phenomenon known as wing-assisted incline running (WAIR),” the paper states. It also draws comparisons to sea lions’ differing appendage usage depending on whether they animal is swimming or walking on land. 

The M4 team at CAST also see uses for the Morphobot’s technology here on Earth, particularly in the field of emergency services. One example in the paper describes the aftermath of a natural disaster, in which M4 is able to fly inside a collapsed building, then drive and “walk” around confining obstacles until it locates survivors and alerts first responders. 

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NASA’s supersonic plane has moved closer to the runway in preparation for its debut flight. 

New photos show the X-59 supersonic plane parked on the flight line — the space between the hangar and the runway —  at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California. The plane was moved from its construction site to the flight line on June 19, according to a statement from NASA. 

This milestone kicks off a series of ground tests to ensure the X-59 is safe and ready to fly as part of NASA’s Quesst mission, which aims to demonstrate that the aircraft can fly faster than the speed of sound (or Mach 1) without generating the loud sonic booms generally produced by supersonic planes. 

Related: Watch NASA’s supersonic X-59 jet come together in Lockheed Martin’s new video

“NASA will then fly the X-59 over several communities to gather data on human responses to the sound generated during supersonic flight,” officials said in the statement from the space agency. “NASA will deliver that data set to U.S. and international regulators to possibly enable commercial supersonic flight over land.” 

The X-59 supersonic jet is expected to produce only a gentle thump, or the equivalent of a nearby car door slamming, for people on the ground. In comparison, previous generations of supersonic aircraft are known to rattle windows when flying over the speed of sound. 

Therefore, the X-59 could lead to new sound-based rules regarding supersonic flight over land, opening new doors for faster commercial cargo and passenger air travel. 

The plane will remain parked near the runway during its ground and initial flight tests by Lockheed Martin. The 99.7-foot-long, 29.5-foot-wide aircraft is powered by a single jet engine, which was built by General Electric Aviation, a subsidiary of General Electric. It is designed to reach a speed of Mach 1.4, or 925 mph, flying at an altitude of 55,000 feet (16,764 meters).

If all goes according to plan, the X-59 will fly over select U.S. cities starting in 2024. Residents will be able to share their responses to the sound produced by the X-59 aircraft. Then, data collected from the flights will be shared with American and international regulators in 2027, when the Quesst mission comes to a close. 

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Chinese commercial launch firm Landspace is preparing for the second test flight of its Zhuque-2 rocket, setting the stage for a groundbreaking achievement, should the methane-fueled rocket successfully reach orbit.

Zhuque-2, meaning “Vermillion Bird-2,” is scheduled to launch on July 12, 2023, at 2:00 a.m. ET from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, according to NextSpaceflight. The rocket’s success could usher in a new era of methalox-powered rocket engines for orbital and interplanetary transportation. The global spaceflight community will undoubtedly be keeping a close eye on this upcoming launch as Landspace seeks to demonstrate the viability of methalox rocket fuel. As of yet, no information has been disclosed about the rocket’s payloads.

Methalox is fast becoming the preferred rocket fuel for launch providers. The benefits of methalox (a methane-oxygen mixture) are deemed to be more attractive than conventional liquid fuels like kerosene due to its cleaner, safer properties, and is deemed particularly suitable for reusable rockets. And conceivably, it could be manufactured off planet, including on Mars. Several prominent space companies are developing rockets that will use the fuel, including SpaceX’s Starship, Rocket Lab’s Neutron, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, and Relativity Space’s Terran R.

The first launch of the 162-foot-tall (49.5 meters) rocket didn’t go so well. Zhuque-2 failed to reach orbit during its maiden flight on December 14, 2022, resulting in the destruction of all 14 satellites on board. Investigations traced the issue to a faulty second-stage liquid oxygen inlet pipe, as reported by SpaceNews. A successful mission this time would see Landspace becoming the second private Chinese company to conduct a successful launch with a liquid propellant rocket, after Space Pioneer achieved the feat in April with its Tianlong-2 rocket.

Equipped with gas generator engines, the Zhuque-2 is capable of producing 243 metric tons of thrust, and it boasts a payload capacity of 6 metric tons to low Earth orbit—or a reduced payload capacity of 4 metric tons to a Sun-synchronous orbit, the company claims.

The evolution of the Zhuque-2 represents a significant shift in Landspace’s strategy, which earlier focused on solid propellants like the one used in the three-stage Zhuque-1 rocket, which failed to reach orbit during its first and only launch. Landspace and the Zhuque-2 are products of the Chinese government’s commitment to opening up the space sector to private industry, a process that began nearly 10 years ago.

Two other methalox-driven rockets failed to reach orbit during their maiden flights, namely SpaceX’s Starship and Relativity Space’s 3D-printed Terran-1, the latter being retired and replaced with Terran-R. A private launch provider, one would think, will eventually hoist a methane-fueled rocket to orbit. This coming Wednesday, it could very well be Landspace.

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