Russia Is Sending Its First Humanoid Robot To The International Space Station
Russia's space agency Roscosmos is about to send a humanoid robot to the International Space Station. Skybot F-850 will be sent to the ISS on August 22 on board the Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft, and will spend over two weeks there before returning to Earth on September 7.
Roscosmos recently shared the impressive first look of its very first robonaut pumping iron, walking, driving a car and using power tools.
The humanoid robot Skybot F-850 was created by the Android Technology Company and the Advanced Research Foundation.
The Skybot F- 850 will take charge of the Alliance MS-14 spacecraft and will commence its journey to the International Space Station on August 22, 2019, and will return to Earth on Sept. 7, 2019.
Skybot F-850 will be transferred from the ship to the Russian segment of the station where it will be met by cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov who was specially trained to handle the robot, said the Russian Federal Space Agency in an online statement. The robot nicknamed FEDOR - which stands for Final Experimental Demonstration Research - the anthropomorphous machine was seen undergoing a battery of stress-tests at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Weighing over a hundred kilograms, the robot can crawl, stand up after falling down, take and leave a driver’s seat in a car and use power tools, carefully mimicking human movements. Fedor has been designed to assist in construction of human bases on the Moon and other planets.
FEDOR made headlines in 2017 when Dmitry Rogozin, director general of Roscosmos, shared a video of it shooting guns. Shortly after he clarified they "are not creating a Terminator, but artificial intelligence that will be of great practical significance in various fields."
The Russian robot is finally ready to make its space debut aboard the unmanned Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft that is heading to the International Space Station next Thursday. Fedor has just wrapped up with a battery of stress-test at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Central Asia. Its also the place where the spacecraft will be launched.
“We can officially confirm, that according to the planned flight schedule to the ISS, FEDOR humanoid robot is preliminary [sic] scheduled to fly to the ISS on August 22 aboard Soyuz MS-14 carried by the Soyuz 2.1a carrier rocket,” Oleg Bolashev from the Russian space agency Roscosmos.