Gecko Gripper blasts off to help design space- crawling robots

In a few years, the exterior of the International Space Station could be crawling with geckos. It’s not an alien invasion, or the plot of a low- budget sci-fi movie. The robotic geckos could follow from an experiment NASA launched to the International Space Station on Tuesday aboard an uncrewed Cygnus spacecraft . The Gecko Gripper devices use tiny artificial hairs that replicate the ones geckos use to climb walls . They are designed to help astronauts to keep track of objects in zero gravity, and enable robots to crawl around a spacecraft to inspect and repair it. The bots have already been tested on parabolic aircraft flights, where they grabbed and manipulated 10-kilogram and 100-kg objects during 20-second periods of microgravity. On the ISS trip, astronauts will test the system by attaching it to surfaces inside the space station. They will attach five devices in a range of sizes to 30 surfaces at different angles to check how well they grip. The devices wi...