On her first visit to orbit, NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers has just introduced herself to three robots stationed aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
“We hit the ground running (or floating??) here on the space station,” Ayers, who arrived at the ISS just over a week ago, wrote in a post on X. “In addition to data collection for one of the studies, I got to help load some software onto the Astrobees. This is Bumble!”
We hit the ground running (or floating??) here on @Space_Station! In addition to data collection for one of the studies, I got to help load some software onto the Astrobees. This is Bumble!
These robots are a technology demonstration meant to help astronauts with routine… pic.twitter.com/RBTQPkphyx
— Nichole “Vapor” Ayers (@Astro_Ayers) March 24, 2025
As Ayers said in her post, the Astrobee robots are a technology demonstration and are designed to assist the ISS astronauts with routine duties that include taking inventory, documenting experiments, or moving cargo, freeing up the astronauts to take care of tasks “that require a human touch.”
The compact, cube-shaped flying robots were developed and built at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, and were sent to the orbital outpost in 2019.
The floating bots include various cameras and sensors for navigation, and also come with a touchscreen, speaker, and microphone. They even have a mechanical arm to which various tools can be attached.
Instead of floating freely, the Astrobee robots use a fan-based propulsion system to move in a specific direction, with power for the fans and the rest of the robot provided via an onboard battery. When power runs low, the robot automatically navigates to a nearby dock to recharge.
“Robots will play a significant part in the agency’s mission to return to the moon as well as other deep space missions,” NASA says on its website. “Robots such as Astrobee have the capacity to become caretakers for future spacecraft, working to monitor and keep systems operating smoothly while crew are away.”
One of the space station’s best known robotic devices is the Canadarm2, a 17.6-meter-long robotic arm that’s been attached to the exterior of the ISS since 2001, performing tasks such as moving supplies and equipment, and assisting with spacewalks. Earlier this year, NASA shared video footage of astronaut Suni Williams taking a ride on the Canadarm2 during a spacewalk 250 miles over London, England.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.