To the Moon Ant Beyond
AstroAnts — tiny, versatile robots that inspect spacecraft and rovers for maintenance issues — are blasting off to the Moon next year.
When humans finally make their return to the Moon in the next few years, they will have to bring everything that they need for the journey with them. It is easy to overlook the significance of this fact, but they can’t exactly swing by the local lunar store to pick up groceries or call a 24-hour repair service if their equipment gets out of whack, now can they? Yet bringing everything and the kitchen sink to account for every possibility is not practical since there is limited space onboard a rocket, and the cost of getting cargo into orbit is astronomical (no pun intended).
So when it comes to space travel, efficiency is the name of the game. Engineers need to pack more functionality into smaller and lighter packages than would seem possible for these missions to be successful. One crucial task that needs to be accounted for is equipment inspections and servicing. When you are already running on a short supply of everything, you can hardly afford to lose any equipment due to preventable problems.
Researchers at MIT’s Media Lab believe that they have a solution that could help with these types of issues. They have designed and built a tiny robot called AstroAnt that can autonomously operate either individually or as part of a swarm to inspect equipment. These tiny bots can, for example, catch a ride on top of a lunar rover to look for, and correct, maintenance issues before they become a real problem. The team also envisions these AstroAnts crawling on the surface of spacecraft in orbit to keep an eye out for anything of concern.
The robots each come equipped with a set of four magnetic wheels that enable them to stick to any metal surface — like that of a rover or other vehicle. There is also onboard processing power to capture and interpret readings collected from sensors. Exactly what sensors are used is flexible and can be adjusted to meet the needs of a specific task. Some might come equipped with thermal cameras, while others may have RGB cameras or inertial measurement units.
Don’t let the small size and cute appearance of the AstroAnts fool you — they are pretty tough. They were designed to travel over rough surfaces, and the motors can even power them over obstacles with an angle of up to 80 degrees.
In 2025, AstroAnts are scheduled to make their first appearance on the lunar surface. This will be their first test beyond the confines of Earth, but if all goes well, these little robots may hitch a ride on a future mission to help keep astronauts safe.