To Infinity! NASA Kicks Up Space Station Tech

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. NASA has pioneered new technologies on the International Space Station for years, but the space agency's latest technological twists are venturing into science-fiction territory.

For example, the next generation of camera-equipped, free-flying robots could usher in an age when remote-controlled gizmos check out the space station's far corners, unassisted by humans on board. But couldn't that open the way for a robot to go rogue, as HAL did in "2001: A Space Odyssey"?

"It's our job to make sure that doesn't happen," Jose Benavides, chief engineer for the SPHERES robotic flier program at NASA's Ames Research Center, told NBC News.

Benavides and other researchers provided an update on space station innovations on Monday during a televised forum at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. SPHERES which is short for for "Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient Experimental Satellites" ranks as one of the station's longest-running tech experiments.

Astronauts have been testing the gas-propelled, beachball-sized satellites since 2006, but just recently the SPHERES devices have been rigged up with Android smartphones to enhance their vison and intelligence. The station's three spaceballs can now use a Kinect-style 3-D scanning system to map their environment.

Sometime next month, the flying robots are due to venture out of their home base in the Japanese Experiment Module for the first time, Benavides said. Eventually, they'll be given the run of the entire space station.

Suppose Mission Control wants to check out an anomalous reading on one of the space station's displays. "Without having to bother an astronaut, the ground operator can navigate the SPHERES over to take a look," Benavides said.

The robot can also be sent to look for, say, a missing wrench while the astronaut who lost it is otherwise engaged. "A lot of the astronauts' time has been spent looking for things," Benavides explained.

This SPHERES robot has been equipped with a smartphone to enhance its navigational capability. This free-flying robot is propelled in zero-G with compressed carbon dioxide gas, but future free-fliers are more likely to use ducted fans or compressed air.

Meanwhile, Benavides and his teammates spend a lot of their time working through even the most unlikely scenarios for example, a stray gamma-ray blast that somehow scrambles the SPHERES software to make sure a flying robot won't turn into a mini-HAL. "Even if all the wrong things happen, it can't hurt anybody or do any damage," he said.

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To Infinity! NASA Kicks Up Space Station Tech