{"id":91076,"date":"2019-05-21T12:22:33","date_gmt":"2019-05-21T19:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/all-the-buzz-about-nasas-new-fleet-of-space-bees"},"modified":"2019-05-21T12:22:33","modified_gmt":"2019-05-21T19:22:33","slug":"all-the-buzz-about-nasas-new-fleet-of-space-bees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/all-the-buzz-about-nasas-new-fleet-of-space-bees","title":{"rendered":"All the buzz about NASA\u2019s new fleet of space bees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/g8WYaaGf2f8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.popsci.com\/forgotten-gel-could-help-future-robot-pollination-bee-drone\">Robot bees<\/a> are no replacement for our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.popsci.com\/science\/article\/2013-06\/10-spectacular-native-bees\">vital pollinators<\/a> here on Earth. Up on the International Space Station, however, robots bearing the bee name could help spacefaring humans save precious time.<\/p>\n<p>On Friday, NASA astronaut Anne McClain <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/image-feature\/ames\/here-s-looking-at-you-astrobee-s-first-robot-completes-initial-hardware-checks-in\">took<\/a> one of the trio of Astrobees out for a spin. Bumble and its companion Honey both arrived on the ISS a month ago, and are currently going through a series of checks. Bumble passed the first hurdle when McClain manually flew it around the <a href=\"http:\/\/iss.jaxa.jp\/en\/kibo\/\">Japanese Experiment Module<\/a>. Bumble took photos of the module which will be used to make a map for all the Astrobees, guiding them as they begin their tests there.<\/p>\n<p>The three cube-shaped robots (Queen will arrive from Earth in the SpaceX resupply mission this July) don\u2019t look anything like their namesakes, but they are non-threatening by design, says Astrobee project manager Maria Bualat. Since they\u2019re built to fly around autonomously, doing tasks for the crew of the International Space Station, \u201cone of our hardest problems is actually dealing with safety concerns,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.popsci.com\/astrobee-robot-space-station?src=SOC&dom=fb&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;\">Read more<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Robot bees are no replacement for our vital pollinators here on Earth. Up on the International Space Station, however, robots bearing the bee name could help spacefaring humans save precious time. On Friday, NASA astronaut Anne McClain took one of the trio of Astrobees out for a spin. Bumble and its companion Honey both arrived [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91076\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}