Robonaut (credit: NASA)A humanoid robot is the newest member of the International Space Station’s crew. The spaceshuttle Discovery delivered Robonaut, also known as R2, weeks ago, but astronauts just unpacked the new crew member on Tuesday. R2 is intended to begin serving as a helper to the astronauts aboard the space station in the coming decade. His initial testing begins in May, but for now, he is simply attached to a pedestal, waiting for his legs to arrive, which will be delivered to the International Space Station next year.
The topic of robots and artificial life was also recently mentioned by CBS News. The article pointed out that some scientists believe that artificial life is most likely what would come off a space ship if one landed on Earth. A professor of computer science at UCLA recently said, “If an extraterrestrial spaceship ever lands on Earth, I bet you that it is 99.9999999 percent likely that what exits that ship will be synthetic in nature.”
Jason McClellan is a UFO journalist and the producer/co-host of the web series Spacing Out! He is also the web content manager and staff writer for OpenMinds.tv, and a co-organizer and technical producer of the International UFO Congress. As a founding member of Open Minds, Jason served as a writer and editor for the now defunct Open Minds magazine. He has appeared on Syfy, NatGeo, and, most recently, he co-starred on H2's Hangar 1: The UFO Files. ------ Follow Jason on Twitter @acecentric and subscribe to Jason's updates on Facebook.
