NASA tests OPTIMISM on Earth to prepare the Perseverance Mars Rover for challenges ahead on the Red Planet.

Improving the Soil Property and Object Classification will save NASA scientists time when planning routes for their rovers and in finding important formations.

NASA’s VIPER rover will land at the Moon’s South Pole in 2023 to map and explore the region’s surface and subsurface. The Moon’s South Pole is one of the coldest areas in the solar system. No prior missions to the Moon’s surface have explored it.

Perseverance’s Sampling and Caching System uses a rotary-percussive drill and a hollow coring bit at the end of its 7-foot-long robotic arm to extract samples slightly thicker than a pencil.

Adaptive locomotive modality, or the ability to move in different ways, is integral to extreme terrain exploration on the Moon and Mars.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover completed its first drive using its auto-navigation feature, which allows it to avoid rocks and other hazards without input from engineers back on Earth.

Data from VIPER could help NASA map resources at the lunar South Pole that could one day be harvested for long-term human exploration at the Moon.

Ingenuity’s four carbon-fiber blades spin in opposite directions at around 2,400 rpm – many times faster than a helicopter on Earth.

Wisk said its partnership with NASA is the first of its kind and is intended to address key challenges and create a framework for autonomous passenger flight.

HeroX has announced the NASA Lunar Delivery Challenge, a crowdsourcing competition seeking a way to develop automated logistics for delivery of supplies to the moon.

In the “Honey, I Shrunk the NASA Payload, The Sequel” challenge, HeroX and NASA are looking for community support for 14 existing teams developing miniature payloads for lunar exploration robots.

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter recharged its batteries for the first time in space by using the Perseverance Rover’s power supply.

The mission includes precision motors from maxon for a robotic arm for handling samples and a novel helicopter.

ATI developed a space-rated force/torque sensor for the Perseverance Rover, which will explore the Martian surface.

Researchers at Georgia Tech have combined limbs that can move up and down with loose wheels for innovative gaits to help propel a NASA rover that could conduct exploration in the sandy hills of the moon or Mars.

HeroX and NASA are looking for crowdsourced proposals for miniature payloads to be launched with micro rovers to explore Earth’s moon in advance of a human return.

The newest edition of NASA’s small, foldable robots recently practiced their scouting skills and successfully traversed rugged terrain in the Mars Yard at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. JPL developed the Autonomous Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Robot (A-PUFFER) to scout regions on the Moon and gain intel about locations that may be difficult…

Russia’s Skybot F-850 robot highlighted the ambitions and shortcomings around humanoid robots in space and for other applications.

KBR, a provider of technology and services to the government and energy industry, worked with Amazon Web Services and NASA to stage a race of fully autonomous vehicles.

The National Air & Space Administration awarded the next phase of funding to Space Systems Loral, a spacecraft systems provider, modifying their contract to continue work on the Dragonfly on-orbit satellite assembly program. The partnership between NASA and SSL intends to create a semiautonomous robotic system to assemble satellites in space. The software to run…

Want to go ice fishing on Jupiter’s moon Europa? There’s no promising you’ll catch anything, but a new set of robotic prototypes could help. Since 2015, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has been developing new technologies for use on future missions to ocean worlds. That includes a subsurface probe that could burrow through […]

The next AGV robot rovers to explore another planet might bring along a scout. The Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Robot (PUFFER) in development at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, was inspired by origami. Its lightweight design is capable of flattening itself, tucking in its wheels and crawling into places rovers can’t fit. Over […]