Russia on Thursday launched for the first time in space a humanoid robot, Fedor, for a trip to the International Space Station (ISS). This mission should serve as a test before riskier and more distant missions.
The robot, bearing the Skybot F850 identification number, took off aboard a Soyuz rocket at 3:38 GMT (5h38 in France) from the Russian Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. He must arrive on the ISS Saturday and stay there ten days, until September 7th. "Let's go, let's go," the robot launched at the launch, according to the footage broadcast on television, repeating the words spoken by Yuri Gagarin when he left for the first flight of a man in the air. space in 1961.
It can mimic human movements
Another video released by the Roskosmos Space Agency showed him aboard the Soyuz capsule holding a small Russian flag in his hand. The robot with the anthropomorphous silver body is 1.80 m high and weighs 160 kg. Fedor is the acronym for "Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research" and refers to the Russian name Fyodor.
Fedor has accounts on Instagram and Twitter social networks, which detail his daily life, for example when he learns to open a bottle of water. "I'm going to fulfill the mission that I have been entrusted with.What is the space still hiding?", Reads one of the messages.
До старта ровно 4 часа https://t.co/AfSb53ETR0
- FEDOR (@ FEDOR37516789) August 21, 2019Once on board the ISS, the robot will test its capabilities under very low gravity, under the supervision of Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov. His main skills include imitating human movements, which means he could help astronauts perform their tasks.
Fedor is not the first robot to fly to the cosmos. In 2011, NASA sent to space a humanoid robot called Robonaut 2, developed in cooperation with General Motors, with the same objective of having it work in a high-risk environment. He returned to Earth in 2018 due to technical problems.