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move over velcro a gecko-inspired

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technology is creating quite a sticky

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situation on the space station the gecko

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gripper is a device that can stick on

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command in the harsh environment of

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space i spoke with aaron parnes the

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principal investigator to learn more

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about the inspiration behind this

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adhesive technology

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our experiment is inspired by the

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toe pads of gecko lizards and so we're

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testing a gripper that uses the same

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kind of adhesive structure that you see

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on the animal now you say they have

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tiny hairs on their toes yeah geckos

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grow really amazing structures on the on

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the pads of their toes it's

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a forest of hairs that branch out into

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even smaller structures that are

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actually at the nanoscale

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and that lets it stick to almost

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anything so adhesion what are we trying

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to adhere to so there are lots of

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applications in space that you would

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want adhesion for

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what's special about gecko adhesives is

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that they're controllable you can turn

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the stickiness on and off

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so for instance you could use it on the

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foot of a robot that could crawl around

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the outside of the space station or on a

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gripper that would be able to

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anchor to something like the surface of

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a solar panel or

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a piece of orbital debris and then

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release it

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when you've put it where you want to

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pretty important for space flight and

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future space flight

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the applications are pretty broad and

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pretty large

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for this experiment we're just testing

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inside the station it's the first test

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of a gecko adhesive in space

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we're going to demonstrate the

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technology make sure it works the same

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way it does on earth and see how it does

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in long duration microgravity

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okay and let me just get this straight

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we're not talking about real gekko hair

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right not real geckos they're the

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inspiration right so we study real

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geckos but we make the material in my

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lab back at jpl it's a rubber-like

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material

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this is pretty much a lifelong project

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for you right i mean how did this begin

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i've been working on gecko adhesives for

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over 10 years now

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it was actually the topic of my phd

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thesis at stanford university and we've

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been trying to apply that to space

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applications

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so when we see it on orbit what's going

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to happen what what are the procedures

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so we're sending up five small gecko

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grippers and the crew will perform

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experiments with them to measure their

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effectiveness on different surfaces

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inside the station we're going to leave

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some of those grippers in place for a

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full year and show that

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this material doesn't wear out we're

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really excited it's the first experiment

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for gecko adhesives in space but

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we think there'll be many more in the

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years to come

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is this your first experiment it is it's

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my first experiment my first hardware

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that's going to space

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extremely excited to see something you

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invented something um

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that your your name is on the patent and

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it's actually going to get used and

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hopefully help the crew and and help our

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goals in space it's very fulfilling i

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can already see this on store shelves

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too

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there are a lot of terrestrial

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applications as well a few companies are

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trying to commercialize gecko adhesives

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the first one might be inside the

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factory picking up cereal boxes or flat

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screen tvs and and packaging them or

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moving them around

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in the long term though you might see

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these replacing velcro on your