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Space Science

NASA Plans Robotic Lunar Scouts 122

Posted by michael from the takeover-imminent dept.
bleckywelcky writes "NASA's plan to send robotic scouts to the moon in advance of astronauts is starting to take shape, but politics and the presidential election are stalling progress. Yet, NASA is already designing the first of the robotic explorers. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter would return a global topographical map of the moon, measure deep space radiation in lunar orbit and attempt to find water ice at the lunar poles. Read the whole story."
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NASA Plans Robotic Lunar Scouts More

NASA Plans Robotic Lunar Scouts

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  • Jesus, what next? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @06:14PM (#10705488)
    Sure sure, and next thing you know they'll tell you they'll send a man on the moon. Sheesh...

  • Backwards (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @06:16PM (#10705508)
    Ummm... isn't this a bit backwards? First send men, wait 30 years then send robots?
    • You know what level and type of war the US is involved in by looking at their activities on the moon. For example:

      * Decades-long cold war with soviet block --> man on the moon
      * Months long warlet in Iraq --> robot on the moon
      * In time of peace --> gazing at the moon

      • Re:Backwards (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Rand Huck ( 821621 )
        I see the correlation of the cold war to putting man on the moon, but what correlation does it have to Iraq? This is flawed logic at its worst, considering we've had Mars missions long before the Iraq war, and we're constructing the International Space Station in the name of world peace and cooperation.

        We've really only had one big mission to the moon so far, and I predict this lunar mission will have nothing to do with the war in Iraq or any other war/peace situation.

      • Re:Backwards (Score:3, Funny)

        by Zackbass ( 457384 )
        In that case, NK better get its ass in gear! We've got a lot of space to explore!
      • ** Months long warlet in Iraq --> robot on the moon**

        make it years.. but hey, they got a tip that saddam hid those wmd's up there in the sea of tranquility. you see, the way he got them up there was that he hid them in apollo XI back in the day when he was playing along with americans.

      • Re:Backwards (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Grendol ( 583881 )
        It seems that we need a new sort of X-prize for this kind of thing too. I wonder how long it would take for private people to do it, as opposed to the program actually getting its funding.
        • The ranger series of robots paved the way for Neil and Buzz. [centennialofflight.gov]

          they flew between 1961 and 1965 [nasa.gov]

          The ranger series of missions were pretty crude. they were cameras on legs which were mostly designed to test the radio controlled retro rocket system for a safe landing... heck the earliest rangers were actually tasked with hitting the moon at any speed to see if it could be done.

          The future robots are many, many orders of magnitude more sophisticated, and will work to establishing an infrastructure (better maps
          • yes not to forget a more reliable communications link to Earth.

            As long as the astronauts stay on the 'Earth side' og the Moon there is no problems, but if manned explorations / bases are to be on the far side of the Moon, then a few orpiting comm-sats would be extremely practical (not to say nescesarry).

            The best way to do this would be to orbit one or two comm sats arround the 'Liberation Point (L5)' behind the moon as described in Buzz Aldrins 'Encounter with Tiber'.

            Yours Yazeran

            Plan: To go to Mars on
          • I was in a robotics club in college and we discussed robotic missions as precursor missions to manned missions. One of the main concepts that we had was a system of robotics rather than one robot, or even team of robots. The concept was multi-function-multi-design self replicating capable robots that used few base component designs in their makeup, with a few custom bits as their application required.

            Now, if that sort of thing was possible/feasible/(and most of all)fundable, the next set of questions

      • > You know what level and type of war the US is involved in by looking at their activities on the moon. For example:
        >
        > * Decades-long cold war with soviet block --> man on the moon
        > * Months long warlet in Iraq --> robot on the moon
        > * In time of peace --> gazing at the moon

        Generational war with Islam --> either mud huts on the moon, or mud huts in New York, which will look like the Moon by the time this is over.

        Like the election, the outcome is too close to call. Unlike t

        • Unlike the election, the outcome has nothing to do with who becomes President next week.
          Whoever won the election won't become president (or, in Bush's case, retain his presidency) until January.
    • ... not really.

      1. Fork out an obscene amount of money to get men to the moon.
      2. Spend 30 years getting increasingly pissed of while watching the tinfoil hat crowd trying to prove those men were never there.
      3. Get fed up with it and send in the robots to prove them wrong.

      Of course we all know that even if NASA does take the time to drive a moonrover righ up to some of the equipment left on the moon by the Apollo expeditions and filmed the stuff those crackpots will still go on claiming the whole thing is s
      • Well the Japs are on the virge of mapping the moon in high detail. I think it takes place early/mid year and it will pretty conclusive whether the US went there or not.

        For the sake of further space programs I do hope there's evidence. If not then it will be the end of NASA IMHO and a sad day for the US.

    • Re:Backwards (Score:3, Insightful)

      by serutan ( 259622 )
      Not backwards at all.
      Men used to have to get up to change channels too.

    • Fleshbots (Score:1, Redundant)

      by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 )
      The reality is that in the 60's technology wasn't up to it. Had to send a man to do a robot's job.

      Interesting that the Soviets were able to land probes and get rocks and film back to earth without needing people.

      Maybe their automated technology was more reliable. But there definitely was a political motive at NASA. Sending people to the moon and making national heros out of the astronouts was a great way of keeping the focus off Vietnam.

      • Re:Fleshbots (Score:3, Insightful)

        by tmacd ( 761305 )
        "Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft...and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor."

        -Wernher von Braun
    • America lost courage and vision. Sending robots to Luna is another symptom of that loss. What does Humanity need further from the Moon? ... more rock samples? Why? We've rock samples already. But that still doesn't answer the "why".

      The answer to "why" is not "why not" or "because we can", since those are silly answers when it costs billions to get them. The real answer is "because we're going back there to stay". A larger answer is "because Humanity is expanding into space and the Moon is a good m

      • if you're going back to Luna to stay, then there's no point in sending robots ... since you'll send yourself along to do all the exploring, surveying and construction.

        I see nothing wrong with sending up robots first, to build the habitats in which humans will live, to plant the farms that will produce the food that humans will eat, to do some initial scientific research, and so forth.
        As long as a major goal of the program is to get people there, I have no problem with robots going there first.

        • That seems logical, but considering the current state of robotics falls far short of being able to autonomously (or even remotely) create a Human base upon the Moon, it is farcical. I say "farcical" since the resources used to make an "Apollo Program" to get robotics to that point, will consume the economic resources to get people to the Moon anyway. If you're going to make an investment to send people into space permanently, you must soon enough send people into space to do everything that can be done wi

  • Lunar Scouts (Score:5, Funny)

    by gtkuhn ( 823989 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @06:18PM (#10705522)
    Will they get special moon badges?
  • Send Arnie back for another look.

  • Sharing Technology with Mars Rovers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by iamlucky13 ( 795185 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @06:32PM (#10705660)
    Since NASA, with Lockheed and Boeing, is spending a fair amount of money on developing radio-thermo generator for the Martian surface laboratory, in addition to the chassis, it would seem to make sense to attempt to share the technology (and associated costs) between the two missions. This could save some money and give NASA more long term experience in developing, using, and maintaining standardized systems. I'm sure some of the instruments could be useful. For example, I don't know about current plans, but there had been talk of equipping a Martian mission, I think the sample return, with a drill for taking a deep subsurface core sample, with hopes of finding a permafrost layer. I expect it could be adapted fairly easily to be used on the lunar surface as well.

  • Green Cheese Mining (Score:4, Interesting)

    by shubert1966 ( 739403 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @06:41PM (#10705744) Journal
    Well that's cool. It's a lot less expensive to send robots than it is to send people. They'll do more science. It'd be really cool if the robots could manipulate objects and construct a green house or a solar array or a water generating plant to sotre resources for future visits.

    Does the lunar soil have nutrients for plant life or would we have to send it up too?
    • Does the lunar soil have nutrients for plant life or would we have to send it up too?

      No nutrients. Lunar regolith is only good for providing structure; anything else would need to be sent up.

      (Nitpick: the stuff on the Moon is regolith [wikipedia.org] -- powdered rock. Soil [wikipedia.org] has significant amounts of organic content as well.)
    • Or they could just take all the material there and get it ready for humans who would eventually put it together. :)

      • The bots could gather lots of 'soil' and sift it to make it powder or one type, melt it using the energy from the sun, make flat panels and beams out of them, then assemble them into complete buildings.

        How easy would it be to train bots on earth to build stuff. then use that 'brain' software that learned properly on the moon but with say 50 bots (send em up in 3 big missions, they dont need to be massive just 2ft tall)

        Then they can spend 1-5 years slowly automatically building stuff, aslong as their chemi
    • Do you mean water generating plant like a tree or a building with a smokestack? Either way, water is a big problem on the moon, there's none of it. Well, there may be some on the poles but hydrogen is more rare on the moon than uranium probably. You can get oxygen from rocks but any moon colony will probably require shippments of water or at least hydrogen.

      if they find an old comet in a polar crater, that could change.

      I'm of the mind that it's probably better to just send shipments of parts and tools a
      • I was thinking so machine to harvest afore-postulated comet ice, purify if neccesary, and store frozen I guess. HEck, maybe it's ok to drink freshly melted? No, I did NOT wish smokestacks. I thought maybe if a solar array or Fresnel setup could maintain liquid water at a steady temperature we might be able to build a greenhouse insulated from the (lack of) elements. Just to do it. Would the fruit of such trees be dark on one side?

  • prior art (Score:4, Insightful)

    by morcheeba ( 260908 ) * on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @06:41PM (#10705749) Journal
    I wonder if it will look like this [nasa.gov]

  • Long day (Score:4, Funny)

    by Thng ( 457255 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @06:41PM (#10705754)
    I read the title as "NASA Plans Robotic Lunar Scots"

    Was wondering what kind of kilts the robots would have.

    • Re:Long day (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @06:48PM (#10705809)
      I read the title as "NASA Plans Robotic Lunar Scots"
      Was wondering what kind of kilts the robots would have.

      And here folks, we have a perfect example of method #34 of getting a +1:Funny rating on Slashdot. Let's detail a generic recipe for this method:

      1 - Quickly peruse the blurb, lift a sentence out of it

      2 - Quote the sentence in your post, pretend you read something else, presumably funny, by changing whatever word you want to anything you want.

      3 - Make some witty comment about what you supposedly thought, or wondered, or believed, by supposedly mis-reading the sentence.

      4 - Don't forget to indicate, somewhere in your post or in the title, that you're tired, you need coffee or you generally need rest, to explain why you would mis-read the sentence in the first place
      Voilà, no need to find a genuine sentence that's funny, just make up your own with some context and watch yourself be modded up!

      That, people, concludes the Slashdot lesson for the day...

      • Re:Long day (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        When I initially read your post, I saw: That, people, concludes the Slashbot lesson for the day... and wondered if those were the same robots in the main article. Damn, I need more coffee.
      • And here folks, is a perfect method of getting +1:Insightful rating on slashdot.
        Lets detail this here:

        1 - Select generic ruuning gag post

        2 - Quote said post

        3 - Meta comment, with self-referential irony, terseness and/or dry humour on said post.

        4 - ????????

        5 - Profit?.......Erm, just a minute

        Damn, it's been a long day, I'm off for coffee and a nice lie down.

    • More importantly, do they dream of electric sheep?

  • Outsource it (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The whole return to the moon project and perhaps all of nasa's jobs should be outsourced to Burt Rutan.
    • The whole return to the moon project and perhaps all of nasa's jobs should be outsourced to Burt Rutan.
      Why? Burt has no track record of managing large projects. His commercial record is, to be charitable, mixed.

      Don't confuse his demonstrated ability to date to create cool one-off hacks with anything but what they are.

  • So when is NASA... (Score:4, Funny)

    by dokebi ( 624663 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @06:45PM (#10705780)
    ...going to do a surface magnetic scan to look for the Monolith?

  • NASA should take a lesson on these mission types (Score:5, Informative)

    by ravenspear ( 756059 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @06:52PM (#10705841)
    from the Lunar Prospector [usra.edu] team. They flew a robotic craft around the moon for 19 months and collected detailed surface data all for a cost of only $65 million. Some say this was NASA's most cost effective mission ever. It originally met opposition because no one believed it could be done that cheap. But despite the low price tag, the data it produced was 10 times better than expected.

  • translation (Score:1, Troll)

    by Jodka ( 520060 )

    "NASA's plan to send robotic scouts to the moon in advance of astronauts is starting to take shape, but politics and the presidential election are stalling progress."

    Translation: Kerry has indicated, if elected, he will kill the new moon and mars exploration agenda to pay for increased social spending. So we won't know until after the votes have been counted whether moon exploration is a go.

  • We already found out thirty some years ago that the moon infact, was not made of cheese. Why go back?!

  • 35 years behind the Russians (Score:5, Informative)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @07:35PM (#10706184)
    The Russian space program sent the Lunokhod 1 [preferred.com] rover to the moon in 1970 and Lunakhod 2 [preferred.com] in 1973. Lunakhod 1 lived 8 months, moved over 10.5 km, and returned 20,000 pictures. Lunakhod 2 operated 4 months, moved 37 km, and returned 80,000 pictures.

  • Makes Sense (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ironsides ( 739422 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @07:43PM (#10706235) Homepage Journal
    This actually makes a lot of sense. The robots can do a lot of scouting ahead of time so that when we do send people back to the moon we can cut out the areas we are sure are of no interest. There are still a lot of things that humans can do that remote controlled robots can't though. At least using robots we can eliminate one of the problems we had with the original Lunar Landing. The original site was too rocky and they had to move over a bit (and wasted fuel) trying to get to a "smooth" landing point. With robots we can get more detailed maps and set down precise landing areas. This will save trouble later on.

  • Men (Score:2, Interesting)

    by kff322 ( 752112 )
    Rover this and robot that; we sent a man to the moon in the 60's why cant we just send one now. It would be a lot more interesting.

    Politics + Science = BS
  • oh it was when they sent a rover to mars. So all theyre adding are some beefy metal arms and cool terminator2 style optics and delay touching the moon for yet another 10-15 years. Looking at the moon can easily be done with some modded mars rovers, which is a much cheaper and easier way than creating all new robots. (IMHO) they should think about space travel(even outside our solar system) more than the moon. Its interesting, but the galaxy has so much more to offer.

    • Looking at the moon can easily be done with some modded mars rovers, which is a much cheaper and easier way than creating all new robots.

      They'd have to be modded more than you may think.
      For example, since the Moon is (effectively) airless, the craft can't use aerobraking and parachutes to help it land.
      Also, the gravity on the surface of the Moon is one-half that on the surface of Mars, so bits of the structure will be shaved off to take advantage of this and to save weight.
      In addition, since there is no e

  • Hey, I don't think the article gave us many details about these robots. Will they be autonamous in the sense of doing their own navigation and such (like the robots in that contest out the desrt earlier this year), or will they be entirely controlled from earth?

    I suppose, with the moon only be a quarter million miles from the earth, a one-to-two second time delay in controlling the robot may not be worth the expense of putting in fancy on-board AI, but ...anybody know more about these robots?
  • I doubt that they would find water at the lunar poles. Man.. there is no atmosphere on the moon.
    Low gravity. if it was ever theere it would have escaped into outer space by now.

  • Bulldozers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chiph ( 523845 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @09:38AM (#10709975)
    So, when do they plan to send the teleoperated bulldozers and other construction equipment? Our Guys will need somewhere to stay below the lunra surface to avoid excessive radiation doses, so they'll want a lunar base that's ready for occupancy when they arrive.

    Why aren't they working with Caterpillar and John Deere on this?

    Chip H.

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