Meet the Grabby, Sugar-Fueled Robots the Navy Wants to Put in Space

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Maybe you need to unfold a stuck solar panel in the vacuum of space. Or maybe you need an autonomous probe to make sure the systems on a satellite are functioning properly in geosynchronous orbit. Or maybe, just maybe, you'd like to turn the gunk at the bottom of a nearby riverbed into fuel for exploring the far end of the solar system. If so, stop by the outskirts of Washington, D.C., because that's where the Navy does its work in space robotics.

Sure, the Navy usually works to keep the world's waterways open for business. But for decades, the Spacecraft Engineering Department at the Naval Research Laboratory has been the outlet for its more celestial ambitions. The 1958 Vanguard satellite -- the second object mankind launched into space -- was one of theirs.

These days, the Spacecraft Engineering Department works closely with NASA and the Pentagon futurists at Darpa on the grabbier end of outer-space science projects. As in literally grabby: "Ninety-nine percent of our focus is robotic arms," says space roboticist Greg Scott.

Those mechanized arms are designed to perform maintenance tasks on space hardware, and even help the Navy down here on earth. But some of Scott's other space projects involve "some pretty ridiculous science," Scott tells Danger Room -- like these robotic astronauts.

BICEP

The BICEP started life in 2009 as a Mitsubishi robotic arm, bought off the shelf. When the Naval Research Laboratory was through with it last year, it had become a tool with seven points of robotic articulation to unravel a solar panel that got stuck in a satellite. When rockets launch satellites into space, their solar panels are folded up for proper aerodynamic launch, and sometimes they don't unfold on their own.

The "end effectors" -- basically the "hands" on the BICEP's two white arms -- are shaped so the device can "push into a spacecraft body, and then the [solar] panel pops out," Scott explains, either autonomously or under an astronaut's controls. (That thin black-metal plate on the right of the picture is subbing for the solar panel.) Then you're ready to catch some rays.

Photo: Naval Research Laboratories