RASSOR drops the scientific instruments of its cousins for 100 pounds of durability.
Posted 01.30.2013 at 5:00 pm
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RASSOR
NASA
Meet RASSOR, NASA's newest mini-space explorer. What you're looking at is a prototype. But one day, NASA plans to send something similar to moon.
RASSOR--pronounced "razer" and short for Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot--checks in at 2.5 feet tall and looks a little bulkier than past generations of rovers. That's by design, NASA says: The robot is built to work through the day, and to last for years doing it.
The job at hand: collecting resources. RASSOR will be tasked with digging up lunar soil and dumping it back into another machine on the moon's surface. That second machine then separates water and ice from detritus to make breathable air or rocket fuel. Usually, a significant portion of a rocket's mass is fuel. So if NASA can make fuel on-site with help from RASSOR, it'll mean NASA can send a lot more cargo on the mission. The same process could work on Mars, too.
Not that it's an easy job for RASSOR. Even speeding along at up to 20 meters centimeters per second--five times Curiosity's top speed--and grabbing about 40 pounds of soil at a time, it'll need to operate 16 hours a day for five years to harvest enough soil for the mission. (Poor guy.) RASSOR itself will weigh about 100 pounds.
One step closer to a fully sustainable lunar base? Maybe! Either way, RASSOR won't be in action for a while. A RASSOR 2 is already being developed, but won't start testing until early 2014.
[NASA]
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This should have happenedclong before blowing money looking for signs ofblife.
Bagpipes, are you anti-exploration?
You so sure there is no life? Just because you think there can't be doesn't mean all of humanity has to go along with your beliefs. 40% of this Country is creationist, like you. That is why we fall behind in science and education. Ignorant morons like you.
he didnt say anywhere that he was anti-exploration or whatever(dont say what he didnt said)... he simply pointed out that funds should have been concentrated on near earth exploration (which still shows his ignorance as SETI fundings and alike are just a drop of whater in the ocean compared to yet underfunded NASA)
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(Type 0.72) = We are still just cleaver monkeys!
@Jackson0458
abiogenesis is a myth. Not one experiement has ever shown otherwise. You naturalists are the myth believers.
@vt007
Ignorant? We've sent a couple mars rovers looking for signs of life already, and they weren't cheap.
never mind Jakson... go ahead.. -_-
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(Type 0.72) = We are still just cleaver monkeys!
So what is powering this fleet or dirt digging robots and the habits on the moon?
Whatever that initial power source is, it would be a great future PoPSCi article!
All this planned activity for the moon, does take power.
All that dirt gathering, air making, rocket fuelling creating, takes a LOT of electrical process power in the first place.
Where is this power plant?
How do you get the power to all the robotic roving devices? Perhaps sending a power microwave beam to each device or is there a better way?
How to power all those human enclose habits and support systems?
YUP YUP PoPSCi, please write me an serious article about his future power plant and power distribution system, please.
Bagpipes, who says God didn't create life elsewhere? No matter what your answer is, you're a fool.
"Where is this power plant?" Solar power??
No crab lives on this beach were lost in the testing of the robot! ;)