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Planet Pizza does not really tackle alien three-eyed toys, but NASA engineers use the same arcade game from Toy Story on an instrument bound for Mars aboard the InSight lander. The claw mechanism will play an important role in InSight's mission. NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) recently explained this role and the operation of the robotic arm in a new video.
"The mechanisms themselves, although they look alike, are very different," said Nicolas Haddad, mechatronics engineer at JPL, to mechanical engineer Mike Meacham. The mechanism is attached to the instrument deployment arm, a remaining part of the March Surveyor 2001 project that has never been launched (although it has been refurbished and modified since).
"With the arcade game, when you catch that stuffed animal and shoot that stuffed animal, you open the claw's fingers and that stuffed animal falls." With the Insight grapple, this mechanism is designed to lock. So once these fingers are closed, it is impossible to pull on those fingers to open it. "
Before being used to pick up objects, NASA will use the claw to unload instruments on the Martian surface. Haddad explains that the mechanism uses a wax actuator to open the fingers. When the grapple is no longer used, the robotic arm is provided with another hook that allows it to be stored while the arm performs other functions.
"We have a lot of things on InSight's robotic arm, so we practiced our version of the claw game dozens of times," said InSight's project manager, Tom Hoffman, in a statement. communicated. "The difference, of course, is that unlike the claw machine designers, our robotic arm team works hard to win every time."
Insight is currently 6 million kilometers from Mars and is expected to land on the planet on November 26th. Scientific operations will begin immediately, but data collection will not begin until 10 weeks later. You can subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest news.
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