$1 Million for the First Simulated Droid That Can Go To Mars

As technology advances exploring becomes easier and more practical, NASA is willing to offer $1 million for the first team that can put together a robot that can be virtually controlled from Earth as it travels to Mars. NASA wants a robot, similar to Robonaut 5 that can re-align communication satellites and maybe fix any number of environmental disturbances, especially when dealing with communication delays between Earth and Mars. This competition is going to be a partnership with Space Houston and the innovation consultant organization NineSigma. Creating robots that can perform very steady and precise applications in order to work with any delays in communications can be of great advantage in spaceflight or landing missions on Mars, and any other mission that deals with any complications that may or will occur.

Just like Robonaut 5 NASA wants a robot to be humanoid which means it is designed to function or move like a human would. This makes it easier for the robot to do similar things to what a person can do. NASA initially began working on this project back in 1996, since then the engineers have been slowly modifying and improving Robonaut. However, NASA is looking into the future and they want a project to be completed for the near future mission were a robot can be controlled virtually and resolve most of the communication terminal related issues that space travel brings. Teams are being chosen this year, by December the final decision will be made as to who will enter this contest and the Final decision will be held in June of 2017, but until then the chosen teams get to practice their rounds as many times as they want and in December of 2017 the final decision will be taken as to which robotic software and hardware is going to win the contest and be part of NASA’s missions.