Lunar robotic explorer climbs Mount Etna
Gadget Master has taken an Italian switch just lately, what with Place in Pompeii and then UNITY/VR for exploring Roman villas. And now, listed here we are with robotic tests on the slopes of Mount Etna.
The challenge is called the ARCHES Space-Analog Demonstration. It’s a multi-agency, multi-robotic mission led by the German Aerospace Middle (DLR) with important European Space Company (ESA) participation.
The plan is that these autonomous robotic networks could be a important foreseeable future technological know-how, enabling investigate in harsh, huge environments. We’re talking the surfaces of the Moon and Mars.

Particularly, for the earlier thirty day period, the job team has been checking out the operations and systems that permit a sample return mission on the lunar floor. This would be require an astronaut on the lunar Gateway with a rover functions regulate home on Earth and scientific expertise on-hand at other control centres.
As section of the simulation, ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter was managing the rover, stationed 2600 m up on the slopes of Mt Etna, from a place 23 km absent in the Sicilian town of Catania. Evidently, this distance simulates the form of distant-regulate conditions astronauts will encounter at the lunar Gateway.
The ESA writes:
“ESA’s 300 kg four-wheeled Interact rover, which is geared up with gripper and camera arms, as properly as a stereo digital camera mast, will be just one of the major stars of the present.”
“Interact can supply much a lot more than pictures of the setting, nevertheless. Its state of the art controls integrate force suggestions that allows astronauts knowledge the planet’s floor in the identical way the rover does – all the way down to the feel of the fat and cohesion of the rocks it touches.”
Extended-time period
You could say, it is a very long way to the best if you want to robotic explore…
This is not the rover’s initially outing, but it has gained a number of updates to aid it weather outside use because it was controlled by ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano immediate from the Global Room Station in December 2019.
It in fact marks the end result of one particular of ESA very long-term robotic research endeavours, dating back again to 2008.
Gadget Master has taken an Italian switch just lately, what with Place in Pompeii and then UNITY/VR for exploring Roman villas. And now, listed here we are with robotic tests on the slopes of Mount Etna.
The challenge is called the ARCHES Space-Analog Demonstration. It’s a multi-agency, multi-robotic mission led by the German Aerospace Middle (DLR) with important European Space Company (ESA) participation.
The plan is that these autonomous robotic networks could be a important foreseeable future technological know-how, enabling investigate in harsh, huge environments. We’re talking the surfaces of the Moon and Mars.

Particularly, for the earlier thirty day period, the job team has been checking out the operations and systems that permit a sample return mission on the lunar floor. This would be require an astronaut on the lunar Gateway with a rover functions regulate home on Earth and scientific expertise on-hand at other control centres.
As section of the simulation, ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter was managing the rover, stationed 2600 m up on the slopes of Mt Etna, from a place 23 km absent in the Sicilian town of Catania. Evidently, this distance simulates the form of distant-regulate conditions astronauts will encounter at the lunar Gateway.
The ESA writes:
“ESA’s 300 kg four-wheeled Interact rover, which is geared up with gripper and camera arms, as properly as a stereo digital camera mast, will be just one of the major stars of the present.”
“Interact can supply much a lot more than pictures of the setting, nevertheless. Its state of the art controls integrate force suggestions that allows astronauts knowledge the planet’s floor in the identical way the rover does – all the way down to the feel of the fat and cohesion of the rocks it touches.”
Extended-time period
You could say, it is a very long way to the best if you want to robotic explore…
This is not the rover’s initially outing, but it has gained a number of updates to aid it weather outside use because it was controlled by ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano immediate from the Global Room Station in December 2019.
It in fact marks the end result of one particular of ESA very long-term robotic research endeavours, dating back again to 2008.