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intball-ed

The International Space Station (ISS) has a new resident, but it's not a human being—it'due south a drone. The small spherical drone was constructed past Japanese infinite agency JAXA with a special orientation system that allows it to maneuver around the ISS and capture video. Non simply is information technology a convenient mode to get footage from space without bugging astronauts, it's an ambrosial lilliputian robot.

There are, of course, plenty of cameras on the ISS already, but astronauts have meliorate things to practice than snap photos. JAXA says the ISS crew spend about 10 per centum of their fourth dimension footling with cameras, so a drone that can film equipment and experiments could increase productivity. However, there were a number of hurdles to overcome before a drone would piece of work on the station. The JAXA drone was delivered to the station in early June past a SpaceX Falcon nine rocket, which included the get-go always reused Dragon sheathing.

The drone, known as "Int-Ball," is 15 cm (5.9-inches) in diameter. Inside is a three-axis control unit that uses reaction wheels to orient the robot. Figuring out how to orient the drone was one of the first issues designers had to figure out. On Earth, a simple accelerometer can be used to decide up and down because of a petty thing called gravity. On the ISS, everything is in freefall and a drone could hands lose track of the "up and down" used aboard the station. That's why JAXA included several pinkish "3D marker targets." The Int-Ball's camera spots these objects on the walls, and uses them as reference points to maintain its orientation.

Since exposed spinning propellers could cause damage to the sensitive equipment on the ISS, Int-Ball is equipped with 12 pocket-size fans recessed into the surface. The control unit of measurement tin fire up any number of fans to move around the interior of the station. The two glowing "eyes" on the front end of Int-Ball are actually just for the benefit of we humans. That makes it easier to know where the drone is looking with the camera, which is positioned betwixt the eyes.

Video from Int-Ball is beamed down to World in real fourth dimension, where researchers at JAXA Tsukuba Space Center can monitor what's going on aboard the station. The next step for JAXA is to improve Int-Brawl'south capabilities to make information technology more autonomous and useful to the crew. It can't go much cuter, though.