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Marc Boucher
Astrobotic’s Autonomous Landing System Tested in Masten’s Xombie Flight, SpaceRef Business
“Astrobotic Technology’s newly developed autonomous landing system was put to the test recently when it controlled Masten Space Systems’ XA-0.1B Xombie suborbital technology demonstration rocket during a flight test at the Mojave Air and Space Port.”
Related: NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate Flight Opportunities Program.
Marc Boucher is an entrepreneur, writer, editor, podcaster and publisher who has worked in space media for more than 25 years. In 1999 he co-founded SpaceRef with Keith Cowing. The new media company grew into a network that included NASA Watch and The Astrobiology Web. After selling SpaceRef, he joined Multiverse Media, which later merged with SpaceNews. There he helped steer the combined company toward more multimedia, a subscription paywall and intelligence products, and pushed for a mobile app. He is also the founder of SpaceQ Media, Canada’s space news and market intelligence publication.
Marc started his first Internet content business in 1992 and hasn’t looked back. When he’s not working, he loves exploring Canada and the world and expanding his photography skills.
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Now Xombie can choose its own landing place on the Moon. I suspect this will apply to any landers Masten Space Systems design in the future, such as Xeus.
NASA’s Morpheus lander can also do this using a rival design.
Two big problems remain – space rating the hardware and getting them to lunar orbit.
[d’ohh… wrong post]
Nice! Autonomy and space are a match made in heaven. Do more! Fund computer science, software, robotics for space applications. Get universities involved. Morpheus gets me excited since I see it as an open(?) software package that could be tuned for and used on different hardware as needed. Build landers that send somewhat standardized data to the brain, tweak the brain for the hardware and mission, and let it do the decision making. Hell, make it learn with learning algorithms too. Learning lander! Of course if it’s a Moon lander, it can’t go full-on learn mode on first go, but let it learn on the job with the pre-programmed autonomous functionality doing the work at first.