A
"robotic lander" refers to a machine or a device designed to land on another planet, moon, or celestial body without human involvement. It is autonomous and controlled remotely by scientists on Earth.
Full definition
Next year, the company, with just 30 employees, aims to be the first private entity to put a small
robotic lander on the moon and perhaps win $ 20 million in the Google Lunar X Prize competition.
On November 12th 2014 the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission will eject the
small robotic lander Philae on a trajectory that should take it down to the surface of comet 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko (or 67P / C - P for short).
And Deep Space Industries, another Silicon Valley startup, thinks it can
land robotic landers on an asteroid within three years — and wants to build an entire space city within 30.
He notes that Trump directed astronauts to the Moon — and
robotic landers do not meet that goal, no matter how much data they collect.
About a
dozen robotic landers and rovers are on the drawing board for launch between now and 2020, many from burgeoning space powers or private ventures that have never yet attempted a landing on an extraterrestrial body.
«I would test out
robotic landers before volunteering to go and mine rock - hard water and hydrocarbons in a complete vacuum,» says Neumann.
To encourage future interest and mass participation in future missions, NASA could incorporate Web - based interactivity
into robotic landers from the start.
Moon Express, based in Cape Canaveral, Fla., announced Wednesday that it had received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to set
a robotic lander on the moon.
The robotic lander pinged the European Space Agency on June 13, sending an 85 - second transmission that let mission scientists know the lander is ready to go to work again on comet 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko.
It's also possible that any surviving Martian microbes are rare and located in places that are difficult for
a robotic lander to reach.
Once they're retrieved, either by a manned or
robotic lander, they would be returned to Earth for further analysis.