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Over the past 60 years, scientists have gotten to know the lunar surface in incredible detail.
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But how about what’s underneath the surface? Hidden beneath the moon’s layers of dusty
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regolith are lava tubes. These subterranean spaces offer scientists hope that we could
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one day use them for building lunar colonies, but they’ve never been explored before….at
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least not yet. That’s where Asagumo comes in.
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-Asagumo is the first walking rover that will be sent to the moon in the next year.
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-Asagumo is the latest rover from Spacebit, a space robotics company based in the United
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Kingdom. Its set to launch onboard the UK’s first mission to the moon and will be the
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first rover ever sent to explore the lunar lava tubes.
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-It's small. It weighs just 1.5 kilos and its main uniqueness is it uses legs instead
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of wheels. -We’ve used massive wheeled ‘bots as our
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means of exploration for years. So why is it time to move into a design with legs?
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-We really believe that legs would provide Asagumo a possibility
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to travel through rough terrain.
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Lava tubes will present a much more rugged landscape
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than the moon's exterior.
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-Basically, a lava tube is just a long cave
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made by lava a long time ago. On Earth we can find lava tubes as well. We really hope
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that lava tubes could be used as a really nice place for a sustainable human lunar base.
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This lava cave should protect from temperature, from radiation, from small meteorites, and
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other potential things that can harm humans. -Because no one has had a chance to explore
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these lava tubes yet, there are still many unknowns. But we think they’re there because
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of the steep pits or skylights we’ve spotted on the moon’s surface.
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Asagumo will be tasked with identifying whether any of these suspected caves could be a suitable
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future home for humans. But as Asagumo prepares to take one giant step for robotkind, you
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might be wondering: how will its design help meet this ambitious goal?
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-The main goal is to walk for 10 meters.
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And during that walk, we will gather telemetry and a lot of data.
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-But there are so many variables when tackling a design
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that involves so many moving parts. (Literally).
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-Legs consume a lot of power. You have to have really fancy algorithms that are responsible for stabilization.
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So the legs in Asagumo have three degrees
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of freedom, and it means that each leg has three motors. So in general, everything makes
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the mission really complicated.
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-But one of the ways the Spacebit team has
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helped alleviate some of these issues is by having Asagumo walk using a specific static
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gait, or walking style, that it can adjust depending on the
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kind of environment it’s in.
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-It moves one leg at a time and at any given point in time, the robot
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can just stop moving any legs and it will stand still. The main disadvantage of this
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type of gait is that it's really slow. And the main benefit is that it's really stable.
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Even though it’s tiny, the rover still packs a punch. Asagumo has an onboard computer,
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Lidar system, radiation and temperature sensors, multi-spectral camera, memory card, Wi-Fi
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link, and a single 4 Watt solar panel.
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Also, in case I forgot to mention, the team outfitted Asagumo
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with some artificial intelligence to make it semi-autonomous.
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-Semi autonomous means that it has some degree of autonomy but it's
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not able to plan the full mission by itself.
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So when we are talking about fully autonomous
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we are talking about achieving certain goals.
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For example, we can say “Hey, walk there.”
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-While all of this sounds—and possibly looks— like science fiction,
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this is just the beginning.
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-The first mission will be a...technical demo.
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And after that, we hope that we will be able to send up to four Asagumos in one mission.
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And we hope that in five or 10 years, the moon will be inhabited by a lot of small Asagumos.
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-In addition to being a first for the UK, this mission could be a game changer
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for establishing lunar colonies on the moon.
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I know when this launch comes around,
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I’ll be keeping an eye out for all of the big discoveries made by this little bot.
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Did you know that the moon is just about 30 Earths away from us?
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So close, yet so far away.
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Be sure to subscribe to Seeker for all your lunar updates
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and thanks so much for watching!
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I’ll see you next time.