Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), NASA, Pasadena, California, USA

Presented at ICRA 2013 by Michael T. Wolf, Christopher Assad, Matthew T. Vernacchia, Joshua Fromm, and Henna L. Jethani from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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While Curiosity continues to blaze a trail to Mount Sharp, the rover takes time to shoot a Martian moon movie

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RoboSimian is an ape-like robot designed to meet the disaster-recovery tasks of the DARPA Robotics Challenge.

This video shows RoboSimian and its unique hands under construction at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., as well as simulations of the finished robot.

The RoboSimian team is led by JPL. Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif., collaborated on the development of the robot's unique hands.

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JPL has developed the worlds first rock climbing robot. This video presents climbing trials at vertical, overhanging, and inverted angles, and a zero-g drill for astronauts.

"Video Presentation of a Rock Climbing Robot," by Aaron Parness, Matt Frost, Jonathan A King, Nitish Thatte, Kevin Witkoe, Moises Nevarez, Michael Garrett, Hrand Aghazarian, and Brett Kennedy, from JPL/Caltech, was presented at IROS 2013 in Tokyo, Japan.

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In a first-time success, NASA remote pilots a roving, untethered vehicle under Alaska's ice. It's a milestone in the quest to develop an unmanned vehicle that could one day plumb the icy reaches of Jupiter's moon Europa.

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#NextGiantLeap
10:30 a.m. PT (1730 UTC)

NASA TV will air a live conversation about the future of space exploration with actor, director and narrator Morgan Freeman. He will speak at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, about his personal vision for space. The event also will include NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman participating from the International Space Station.

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Original air date: Oct. 20 at 7 p.m. PT (10 p.m. ET, 02:00 UTC/GMT)

The ability to rove the surface of Mars has revolutionized NASA missions. With more advanced mobility, cliff faces, cave ceilings, and the surfaces of asteroids and comets could be explored. This talk will present the work of the Robotic Rapid Prototyping Lab at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This includes grippers for NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission, which plans to extract a 15-ton boulder from the surface of an asteroid, and alter the asteroid’s orbit, a method that could prevent future impacts to the Earth. The talk will also present gecko-inspired adhesives currently being tested on the International Space Station, miniaturized robots that can drive across surfaces in zero gravity, and rock climbing robots traversing giant lava tubes in New Mexico. We will discuss not only the projects, but the new tools and techniques (3-D printers, computer-aided-design software, miniature electronics) that allow us to build and iterate robots more quickly than ever before.

Speaker: Aaron Parness

Extreme Environment Robotics Group, JPL

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As a mechanical engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, Kobie Boykins has the awesome privilege of building stuff, only to blast it millions of miles away into space at thousands of miles an hour. He goes into work every day with the enviable job of revealing the remarkable mysteries of our universe, and as part of that mission, he's had a hand in building all of the rovers that have landed on Mars: Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity.

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For years, engineers have had to deal with "the tyranny of the fairing," that anything you want to send into space has to fit into the protective nosecone on top of the rocket. A field of advanced design has been looking for new ways to improve our engineering, using the centuries-old artform to dream bigger.

Host:
Brian White, Public Services Office, NASA/JPL

Co-Host:
Thalia Rivera, Public Outreach Specialist, NASA/JPL

Speaker(s):
Manan Arya, Technologist, NASA/JPL
Lizbeth B. De La Torre, Creative Technologist, NASA/JPL

Original Air Date: January 14, 2021

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The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s success in landing the low-cost Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997 was viewed as proof that spacecraft could be built more often and for far less money — a radical cultural change NASA termed “Faster, Better, Cheaper.”

This era also coincided with the discovery of a Mars rock that hinted at the possibility of microbial life elsewhere in the solar system. NASA’s reaction was to envision a steady stream of missions to Mars — all done at cut-rate costs. In fact, the next challenge taken on by JPL was to fly two missions to Mars for the price of the single Pathfinder mission. Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander both made it to the launch pad, on time and on budget, but were lost upon arrival at Mars, resulting in one of the most difficult periods in the history of JPL.

“The Breaking Point” tells the story of the demise of these two missions and the abrupt end of NASA’s “Faster, Better, Cheaper” era.

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