THE BRAND NEW RASSOR......

Earlier this week, NASA announced the development of a mining robot called RASSOR: the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot. RASSOR has been designed to assist in extracting water, ice and fuel from soil on the moon – all essential resources for future human habitation.

And the reality is, if we want to achieve our dreams of exploring the solar system, robots will be the means.With the exception of a few select missions, human space flight is in a prolonged hiatus. It has languished in low-Earth orbit over the past four decades and is likely to continue languishing for many more.The International Space Station, or ISS (take a guided tour) continues in its orbit 400 kilometres up. And China will soon visit the moon. But for more distant destinations, we’ve realised that radiation and bone loss would harm space travellers for life.There are as yet no cures to the adverse physical effects of space travel, so humans remain bound to Earth, and possibly the moon, for now. Instead, we will use robots for the heavy lifting.As our space minions, robots are expanding humanity’s understanding of the solar system without endangering life and limb.A robot just showed there is water ice on Mercury. Robots have taught us that Saturn’s moons are a wild collection of oddities. And if you haven’t heard about Curiosity – officially the Mars Science Laboratory – and its exploits, you must live on another planet