Step aside Armstrong, it's time for robots on the Moon
It's more than 40 years since the first human set foot on the moon, and now it could be time for another type of lunar explorer altogether.
A robot explorer with two legs and two arms straight out of sci-fi.
While rovers like those that have been trawling the Martian surface in recent times could properly be called robots, and machines like the legless R2 are heading to space, these don't match the classic image of a bi-pedal humanoid bot.
Now a Japanese space-business group is promising to set things in order by sending a humanoid robot to the moon by 2015.
Japan's Space Oriented Higashiosaka Leading Association (SOHLA) expects to spend an estimated 1 billion yen (US$10.5 million) in getting the robot onto the lunar surface.
Named Maido-kun after the satellite launched a aboard a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) HII-A rocket in 2009, there appears to be no clearly defined mission for the robot (apart from getting there).
It's hoped Maido-kun will travel to the moon on a JAXA mission planned for around 2015.
Why not stick to wheels? "Humanoid robots are glamorous, and they tend to get people fired up," said SOHLA board member Noriyuki Yoshida. "We hope to develop a charming robot to fulfill the dream of going to space."
Weird Science Factoid: The human heart weighs less than a pound.
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Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
