Page 103 - How It Works - Book Of Amazing Answers To Curious Questions, Volume 05-15

Space

How do robots keep

astronauts company?

Meet Kirobo, the Japanese robot living on the ISS

eelings of loneliness are often hard to conversational abilities. The Kirobo experiment
avoid when you’re in space. Astronauts also aimed to see how humans and robots might
Fwho stay on the International Space live alongside each other during longer space
Station (ISS) for extended periods often struggle missions, which may take place in the future.
with this feeling. Sometimes, their psychological Kirobo has now returned to Earth after an
issues can be harder to deal with than living in 18-month stay aboard the ISS.
microgravity or sleeping upright.
To combat this, Japanese scientists designed a
robot with the aim of providing psychological
support. It was named Kirobo, which is derived
from the Japanese word for hope (“kibo”) and
robot. Kirobo stands 34 centimetres (13.4 inches)
tall and weighs one kilogram (2.2 pounds). It has
a clever voice-recognition system and can
produce its own sentences with the help of an
advanced language-processing system, and its
own built-in voice synthesis software.
These innovative systems were actually
designed by Toyota, which plans to use the © Corbis; NASA; Toyota
technology to develop other robots’

US Astronauts Reid
Wiseman and Barry
Wilmore during their
spacewalk outside the ISS
to make repairs

Can a spaceship

be repaired in orbit?

Who fixes the ISS when it ‘breaks down’?
stronauts and cosmonauts aboard repair while in space, which will help
the International Space Station further exploration beyond our current
Aperform spacewalks regularly to capabilities. The Apollo 13 mission in 1970
make repairs. In early 2015, two American required the astronauts aboard to make a
astronauts spent about 20 hours over the life-saving repair so they could return
course of three spacewalks installing safely to Earth after an on-board explosion
cables. NASA is also testing technology on aborted their mission to the Moon. At
the ISS that will eventually be used to the time, they were about 322,000km
repair existing satellites in orbit, using (200,000mi) from Earth. So in short,
both humans and robots. This technology spacecraft repairs in orbit are
is part of a campaign to enable spacecraft defi nitely possible.

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