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the space station provides a place to

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test many technologies in this space

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environment where they will be used

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laurie meigs with the station's payload

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operations integration center at the

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marshall space flight center in

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huntsville spoke with chris provencher a

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project manager with ames research

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center he described how his team on the

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ground controls the flight of robotic

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satellites on the station using a

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smartphone similar to the ones many of

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us use every day

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so i'm researching smart spheres which

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is a robotic free flyer on iss so the

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spheres are free-flying satellites on

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iss and they use co2 propulsion to to

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move around and they can navigate but

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there are satellites what kind of

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control are we talking about so the

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controller is actually a google nexus s

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smartphone

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the satellite we can use the wi-fi on

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the phone to communicate with the

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satellite via the lan that's onboard iss

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we can use the processors that are on

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the phone to control where the satellite

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goes and what it does

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we can use the camera on the phone for

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vision and there are other sensors on

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the phone that we can use as well so you

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send communication from the ground you

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call the phone how does that work right

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so the ground controller can communicate

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to the smartphone and tell the

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smartphone where to send the sphere so

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that's how we control where this where

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this free flyer goes and what it does

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have you had any results thus far

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yes so in december of 2012 we did do a

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demonstration where a ground controller

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in the mission control center in houston

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controlled the smart spheres to perform

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a mobile camera task so he was able to

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uplink

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commands to the smart spheres to tell it

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where to go and where to uh to take

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imagery

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and he was able to not only run some

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autonomous uh plans that the smart

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spheres ran but he was also able to

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interrupt the plans and take over manual

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control of the smart spheres so it's

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very successful what did we learn from

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that

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can control a robotic free flyer from

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the ground under the supervision of a

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ground controller

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the crew only has a limited amount of

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time on station and a lot of that time

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is spent doing maintenance and

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housekeeping types of activities to

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include moving cameras around and also

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doing other types of environmental

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surveys such as taking noise level

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readings radiation level readings other

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things to make sure that the station is

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safe but if we can offload those tasks

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to a robot that will free up time for

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the crew to spend more time working on

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science

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and that's what's important to us that's

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what's important

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why is the space station an ideal place

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to conduct this kind of research well

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there are a couple of reasons we want to

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do this on iss

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first the iss is the ideal

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test bed for working in microgravity

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with free flyers

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and secondly since we want these

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robotic free flyers to be deployed on

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space station we're actually doing our

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testing in the operational environment

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the smart spheres is a prototype for a

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future free-flying robotic system

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by by using the smartphone it allows us

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to control the spheres and to

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demonstrate the activities of a

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free-flying camera or a free-flying

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sensor

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and so

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the lessons that we get from these tests