Kalvyn Adams
Nov 2, 2016-
Legend High School
Pushing the Future of Space
into Orbit
The craft slowed down from light speed
with the particles zipping around it as it
entered the ARP 87 galaxy, but no one was
inside the ship. Instead, it was manned by
robots, the future of space exploration. The
use of robots in space exploration is huge.
Insanely huge, so big that without the use
of robotics and programming we would not
have been able to land on the moon! (Lovell,
2009, All of it) The first man launched
object in space was Sputnik, a russian sat-
ellite, that was a huge start off to the space
race, and space exploration. The most recent
unmanned mission was the Phoenix Mars
Lander, and is helping scientists study the
red planet, one day to be ready for human
exploration. Robots are the future of space
exploration, and humanity will follow short-
ly behind to fully discover and answer the
questions we find out there in the void, that
cant be answered by a robot.
The use of robots in space started on Oc-
tober 4, 1957, when the a Russian satellite Sput-
nik was launched into orbit around our earth.
Sputnik, on a basic level, was a robot, just a
giant electricity filled ball that could transmit
a radio beeping noise down to earth. (Garber,
2007 Sputnik and The Dawn of the Space Age)
Since then robotics have evolved immensely,
and new robotic developments have lead to
things like the mars rovers, lunar orbiters, even
satellites that arent orbiting anything and are
just quietly speeding through space sending
back information from thousands to millions
of miles away. More recent technology has lead
to the development of some very useful abili-
ties the robots can use, like being able to sam-
ple a piece of rock from the surface of mars,
to taking huge beautiful pictures of space, to
just sending out a signal waiting for a response
from alien technology. All of this has been a
large part in how we understand space and
our solar system, planets, galaxy, and universe
today.
Robots are a huge part in discovering
things about space, but they are also helpful
in protecting humans as well. Yup, thats right,
protecting humans. Sending out these robots
has probably saved the lives of multiple peo-
ple, mainly because some of these missions are
highly risky, take extreme amounts of time,
and have some serious unknown factors. A trip
to mars would take 6 months, 6 MONTHS!
And thats just to get there, not only that but
 the people on Mars have to wait 18-20 more
months before the planets are aligned enough
to take off and take another 6 month trip
back to Earth. Thats 30-32 months! Who
would want to spend 2 and a half years in
space, almost in solitary confinement. (Cain,
2016 How long does it take to get to Mars?)
Not only does it take a while but there are
many things that could go wrong in the
mission, a gas tank explodes, the retro en-
gine doesnt work, anything could go wrong,
but we dont have to risk our lives doing it, if its safe to go. The development and
the robots can do the journey for us, and the possibility of space travel are endless,
robots require less to travel, like no food or and humans will continue to thrive and
oxygen, or water, which significantly decreas- explore, but with the help of these ro-
es the likelihood of disaster. botics and technology, we could go even
The future of space exploration is further, travel to cooler places, discover
largely dependant on the development of new things, new species, we could even
robotics. The future might hold abilities like outpass the earths lifetime with space
traveling at the speed of light or instant tele- exploration, Scientists are already work-
portation, (Howell, 2015 Move Over R2-D2! ing on technology to help us reach fur-
NASA Already has Plenty of Robots in Space) ther planets in our solar system. With
but without robots and technology devel- the help of our autonomous electrical
oping it and testing it we wont have those friends, our future here and out there
things. Plus, going to another universe would will be brighter.
be extremely cool, but we would barely know
anything about it until we send a probe or
a satellite into it to tell us whats in it and

Resources:
Steve Garber, October 10, 2007. http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/
Randy Russell, May 20, 2008. http://www.windows2universe.org/space_missions/un-
manned_table.html
Apollo 13, by Jim Lovell
Elizabeth Howell, December 16, 2015 http://www.space.com/31398-star-wars-droids-vs-na-
sa-robots.html
Fraser Cain, October 31, 2016. http://www.universetoday.com/14841/how-long-does-it-take-
to-get-to-mars/
Loura Hall, September 1 2016. http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/centennial_chal-
lenges/feature/space_robotics_challenge.html
Picture: http://www.razorrobotics.com/images/space-robots/mars-rover-2004-large.jpg
Picture: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/471146main_jsc2010e089924_hi.jpg