I know that NASA first put a robot into space but I am captivated by “Fedor” the Russian robot who was launched today for the ISS in his own Soyuz ship. Yes, I know I shouldn’t anthropomorphise, but I like this guy. He has his own twitter and instagram accounts.
https://www.usatoday.com/media/cinematic/video/2082924001/russia-sends-fedor-its-first–robot-into-space/
https://mobile.twitter.com/hashtag/fedor?lang=en
https://www.instagram.com/robot_fedor_kosmos/?hl=en
Sir;
I saw Ballard do a presentation recently and he stressed “telepresence” as a way to do science in extreme environments “on the cheap.” Low Earth Orbit and cislunar space would not impose too much of a communications lag on remote control of robot workers in close in space. I would be interested to see how much bandwidth is used to communicate with Fedor.