NASA is testing a new robotic arm that really knows how to chill out
When NASA returns to the Moon with Artemis, the agency and its partners will reach unexplored regions of the lunar surface around the South Pole, where it can get much colder at night than even on frigid Mars. Such surface conditions would be challenge for current spacecraft, which rely on energy-consuming heaters to stay warm.
A technology demonstration being developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California may offer a solution that would enable exploration during the dark of lunar night, a period that spans about 14 Earth days. The project, which recently underwent testing at JPL, is called Cold Operable Lunar Deployable Arm (COLDArm). It combines several new technologies to create a robotic arm system that can function in temperatures as low as minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 173 degrees Celsius).
"Going to the Moon, we need to be able to operate during colder temperatures, particularly during lunar night, without the use of heaters," said project principal investigator Ryan McCormick. "COLDArm would let missions continue working and conducting science even in extreme cryogenic environments."
To explain the project, McCormick recalls a scene from the 1991 movie "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" in which a hostile android made of liquid metal is stopped cold - literally frozen solid - by a giant spill of liquid nitrogen. "The bad guy can't work in those temperatures, but COLDArm could," McCormick said.
While COLDArm won't be operating in liquid nitrogen, it could operate on a lander sent to a frozen ocean world like Jupiter's moon Europa, where its lack of heated parts would have the added benefit of allowing collection of volatile materials without significantly affecting the temperature of samples. It could free up some two hours of time and up to 30% of a mission daily's energy budget that Mars rovers like Curiosity and Perseverance spend warming up their robotic arms so their gears don't stress and break in the cold.
The 6-foot-6-inch (2-meter) arm is equipped with two commercially available cameras for 3D mapping that have the same imaging sensor that is built into the 13-megapixel color camera used by NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter - one of several technologies COLDArm is adapting from the little rotorcraft. A variety of attachments and small instruments could go on the end of the arm, including a 3D-printed titanium scoop for collecting samples from a celestial body's surface. And, like the arm on NASA's InSight Mars lander, COLDArm could deploy instruments to the surface.