Space missions require resources—not only food and water, but project materials such as minerals and metals or gases. Our normal method of getting these things to Mars or the Moon (simply throwing them up there from Earth) is incredibly expensive and inefficient, which is why NASA has developed a system that can mine resources straight from the Martian earth.
Robotic mining is nothing new, at least here on Earth—NASA even holds an annual Robotic Mining Competition, where contestants mine simulated Martian dirt. But mining for resources such as water, minerals, and metals in actual Martian dirt will be a little challenging, as unlike here on Earth there’s no real way for us to tell where those resources are buried.
That’s why NASA engineers built the “Swarmies”: space robots that were specifically designed for forage for materials in the same way as ants. Ants are capable of sensing and exploring their surroundings at a much finer level than most technology we’ve launched into space for the purpose…plus, hundreds and hundreds of ants all work together to accomplish their goal, which is always a plus.
Each individual Swarmie—Swarm?—bot is equipped with basic hardware and programmed with a simplistic set of rules. When a Swarmie finds something of note (NASA tested them with a barcode on the ground, among other things), they’ll call over the other bots in the system to help out.
Currently, there are only four Swarmies in the system, but there could be more added in the near future. The ‘bots should prove a much more efficient way of space resource management, as it’s easy to launch and utilize dozens of cheap, tiny robots programmed for teamwork.
NASA eventually plans to incorporate RASSOR—a “concept robotic vehicle”—into the Swarmie system, which could help the tiny bots know what they’re looking for.
Source Discovery
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