Flying Astrobee Robots On ISS Augur Guardian Spacecraft Of The Future

Forbes

03-04-2025

Superstar ISS Commander Suni Williams helps test out an Astrobee free-flying robot, outfitted with ... More mechanical octopus tentacles to capture dead satellites and hyper-speed space debris, as she orbits the planet at 28,000 kilometers per hour.
Free-flying Astrobee robots now being tested on the International Space Station could give rise to incredible guardian spacecraft that halo the ISS and protect it from super-speed shrapnel threatening the lives of all its astronauts.
Three years after an exploding cloud of shards from a Russian anti-satellite missile - speeding toward the ISS at 28,000 kilometers per hour - sparked NASA to order the Station's astronauts to seek refuge inside their escape capsules, leading robotics experts are conducting experiments that could one day lead to a futuristic defense against similar threats.
A constellation of ISS spacefarers, including just-returned Station Commander Suni Williams, have been overseeing tactical demos of the fantastical bots. In their current configuration - resembling aliens that are part machine and part sea creature - they almost appear to have taken flight from a Transformers film, and from the future into the present age.
The three Astrobees - identical triplets - now aboard the orbital outpost started out their lives with a remarkably different mission, says Jonathan Barlow, who heads the Astrobee Project at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, the American space agency's freewheeling fountainhead of invention and radical experimentation.
Each Astrobee is outfitted with internal propellers to fly, along with three smartphone-class ARM processors and a suite of six imagers, including a high-resolution video camera and two leading-edge LIDAR time-of-flight sensors, that combined allow the airborne robot to map and navigate its surroundings.
The International Space Station is a technological wonderland, and the globe's greatest platform to ... More test out next-generation space robots. Shown here is an artist's impression of the ISS. (Photo by NASA/)
Initially, Barlow says, the highly autonomous Astrobees were designed as mobile cameramen that can glide across the Station and stop in mid-flight to film ISS astronauts, and as sophisticated platforms to host experiments devised by guest scientists across the outpost's allies.
Each floating robot can be operated by NASA Ames ground controllers, or by the ISS astronauts via their laptops, who can program hours-long sorties for them to fly through, or tele-operate the droids move by move.
Barlow, a vanguard aerospace research engineer who helped develop the Astrobees and their Robot Operating System-derived software, tells me in an interview that his Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames has joined forces with a dynamic space-tech outfit to transform the flying machines as precursors to a future stage of missions: capturing satellites that have exhausted their propellant or even out-of-control space debris that increasingly threatens the high-traffic rings of low Earth orbit.
Inventors at this partner outfit - Kall Morris Inc - told me they've outfitted the Astrobees with next-generation biomimicry technology to empower the robots to capture free-floating space objects.
They have engineered a complete metamorphosis of the ISS bots, which have been armed with an array of octopus-like tentacles, fitted with gecko-inspired adhesive pads, that can ensnare even spinning nanosatellites.
This hybrid astro-octopus, they say, can now capture space objects measuring up to 6.5 meters in diameter - the size of the Webb Space Telescope's mirror - adhere to it with gecko 'clingers,' and propel it into an alternate flightpath.
Fantastical Astrobee flying robots, enhanced with an array of octopus-like tentacles, test out ... More capturing simulated satellites floating across the Space Station.
Starting last summer, onetime test pilot Suni Williams helped guide these Astrobees through a series of fascinating maneuvers as they chased and deftly captured simulated CubeSats floating across the Kibo module of the Station - all as forerunner flights to hyper-tech debris removal sorties in times ahead.
Barlow's team at NASA Ames, and his KMI partners, liaised in real-time with Williams, a former Space Shuttle astronaut, as she oversaw these demonstration flights 400 kilometers above the globe.
So far, the enhanced Astrobees have already captured more than one hundred 'target spacecraft' inside the Space Station, and a new sequence of these chase-and-seizure demos is slated to start in early April, just weeks after the arrival of a new contingent of ISS astronauts, says Troy Morris, who heads the Michigan-based KMI.
Even as its cutting-edge robotics tech is tested across the microgravity platform of the ISS, Morris tells me, his skunkworks lab is developing a new spacecraft, called Laelaps, that will be equipped with more powerful Space Octopus features to rendezvous with and take control of dead satellites and spent rocket stages that now crisscross and threaten low Earth orbit.
The robots and orbital flyers being developed by KMI are at the forefront of a nascent campaign - stretching from North America to Europe to Asia - to begin clearing heavily traveled orbital lanes of the spacecraft and shrapnel that could threaten future human spaceflight, the ISS and the space stations set to be lofted by independent aerospace operators.
The Laelaps now being perfected by Morris's group might one day be deployed like a celestial ring of protectors around the ISS, prepared to capture any debris - from missile fragments to castaway rockets - determined to be on a precise collision course with the Space Station.
The immediate focus of his studio, Morris says, is on demonstrating autonomous docking with and relocation of orbiting satellites and spacecraft that have lost their ability to maneuver.
A target CubeSat is captured by an Astrobee robot inside the Kibo module of the ISS
Yet much more complicated, potentially live-saving missions are being mapped out for the future, he says: 'The concept of deploying a fleet of autonomous satellites to safeguard critical infrastructure - such as the ISS - against collision threats is compelling and something we are exploring conceptually.'
In a series of captivating papers, Morris and co-founders of KMI have pinpointed 198 rocket bodies, launched from the U.S. since the start of the Space Age and now spinning around the planet at up to 2000 kilometers in altitude, that would make optimum targets when the American government begins funding active debris removal operations.
'The population of artificial objects in Earth orbit has increased steadily since humanity began utilizing the space environment decades ago,' Morris states in one study. 'Currently the U.S. Air Force tracks over 44,000 objects larger than 10 centimeters in Earth orbit.'
'Should these objects collide,' he adds, 'debris clouds would form, setting off a domino effect of more collisions' in a potential orbital doomsday called the 'Kessler Syndrome.'
Meanwhile, as his robotic spacecraft advance their ability to intercept runaway space objects, Morris says, KMI could 'provide our protective services to the ISS, other stations, and the growing needs of all space operators.'
Back on the International Space Station, the re-engineered Astrobees are set to whiz through a new series of aerial war games, tracking and overpowering their hovering prey.
After collaborating with iconic NASA aeronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on these zero-gravity exercises, Troy Morris says, his lab is set to team up with a new corps of ISS sojourners.
Just-launched astronaut Anne McClain, who has extensive experience in drilling the Astrobees from an earlier trek to the space-lab, might be a strong candidate to lead the new round of tests with the revamped droids, Morris predicts.
Back at NASA Ames, Jonathan Barlow muses that the future-tech progeny of the Astrobees might one day be deployed to shield human spacecraft, including the colossal International Space Station, from incoming threats moving at hyper-speeds.
This next-generation potential to act as celestial sentinels, he says, 'certainly seems like a cool idea.'
'I think that something like that, you know, guardians outside of a space station could, yeah, could definitely happen.'
Since being launched to the Station five years ago, Barlow says, the Astrobees have already spearheaded a spectrum of breakthroughs - including advances in human-robot interactions by connecting up with astronauts and aerospace wunderkinds of the future.
The space-bots have generated circles of acolytes across American classrooms, Barlow adds, via boosters like MIT's Zero Robotics tournament, which challenges high school creatives to program Astrobees to race through a series of maneuvers with deftness and style.
During the early rounds of these nationwide competitions, he says, these would-be operators of the robots code them to speed across a simulated ISS.
Yet the world-watched ultimate round - the championship - he adds, 'is on ISS with real astronauts and real Astrobees.'
Suni Williams lauds the tournament, and says she had a blast teaming up with students during the final Astrobee match on the Station.
Iconic astronaut Suni Williams says she had a blast teaming up with young programmers competing to ... More maneuver the Astrobee robots across the ISS during the Zero Robotics championship staged by MIT
During her first press conference back on terra firma this week, Williams suggested this orbital Olympics for aero-robots might also help NASA discover its astronauts, coders and inventors of the next generation.
'We did lots of experiments up there with kids and universities,' she said, 'and trying out new guidance and navigational control, and robots that were flying inside of the Space Station.'
'That is pretty awesome that you can really touch and talk to kids on the ground as you are doing experiments up there.'
'And they have their finger on the pulse of science experiments.'
'And they can understand that,' the superstar astronaut added, 'and think to themselves 'I can be part of this someday.''