Astrobee B# in Granite Lab
ASTROBEE By Sabrina Barlow
This little robot is paving the way for new technology and innovation leading towards changes in the way we imagine space travel.
I
n April 2019, I watched a rocket ignite and rumble into space. This rocket was special—it contained my dad’s robot. My family watched the launch together on a sunny afternoon and simultaneously cheered for the rocket and for my dad. After years of designing, building and testing, Astrobee was finally headed to the International Space Station (ISS). The Astrobee project includes a duo of robots that are currently in the ISS. Their names are Bumble and Queen, and they are free-flying robots, acting as both a platform for science and helping out with astronaut chores. Their current focus is robotic caretaking, when robots like Astrobee assist astronauts with various tasks, independently maintain systems and address problems.
Astronaut time is valuable, and there won’t always be astronauts present on space stations to make sure everything is working properly. When that happens, robots like Astrobee will serve as the caretakers. Not much is known about the future of humans in space, but we do know that robots will be a big part of it. Astrobee is paving the way for new technology and innovation leading towards changes in what we imagine is possible in space travel.
The Launch of Astrobee Astrobee is a series of robots which fly around inside the International Space Station and do various tasks. They use cameras to “see” their surroundings and compare these images with their internal map of the ISS. Using the features inside the ISS to localize themselves and navigate, they fly around with a fan-based propulsion system. With this mechanism, Astrobee can propel itself in any direction and rotate on any axis. Because of the microgravity environment in the ISS, Astrobee floats freely relative to its surroundings. Astrobees are cubeshaped, a foot in each dimension, with two propulsion