I Knew Them When

David Hitt, MSFC, AL

One of the cool things about working and writing for NASA is that you get the chance to meet and talk to astronauts. It adds something to watching a shuttle launch when I’ve had the opportunity to meet some of the people on board. It makes it a little more personal, a little more real.

And it’s always very cool to me when a shuttle mission flies carrying an astronaut that I met "back when."

The crew of STS-133, for example, includes three astronauts that I’ve had the chance to meet. First, there’s Alvin Drew. When I met Drew, he had just returned from the fairly high-profile STS-118 mission that flew the first education mission specialist astronaut, and had been named by People magazine as one of the nation’s hottest bachelors.

Eric Boe and Tim Kopra, on the other hand, I met fairly early in their careers. Both of them had not yet flown in space the first time I saw them. I met each when they piloted planes to bring other astronauts to Marshall Space Flight Center to talk about recent missions.

Since then, Kopra has gone on to spend two months in space as a crew member on the International Space Station, and Boe was part of a space shuttle mission that added a bathroom, kitchenette, two bedrooms and gym equipment to the space station.

And the “fourth” member of the crew I met “back when” -- Robonaut 2.

Except he wasn’t Robonaut 2 when I met him; he was still just Robonaut. I saw an early version, still in development in a lab in the back of Johnson Space Center’s Building 9, best known as the home of spacecraft mock-ups used in astronaut training. But the coolest thing -- I got to look through his eyes. Robonaut’s head features two cameras, that let a remote operator see what’s in front of Robonaut via a 3-D headset. And I got to put on the headset, and see what Robonaut saw. Very cool. And now he’s about to fly into space for the first time. Even cooler.

Cooler still, thanks to Robonaut 2’s Twitter account, @AstroRobonaut, you’ll be able to do the social networking equivalent of what I did -- see spaceflight through Robonaut’s eyes. Look how far he’s come.

I’m excited about seeing what Boe, Drew and Kopra (and their crewmates) will do on the STS-133 mission. But I have to admit that, personally, I’m even more excited about following Robonaut 2’s adventures in space. I’m enough of a science-fiction geek that I find the idea of real-life robots working on a real-life space station somewhat futuristic and more than a little cool. Granted, Robonaut 2 won’t be the first robot on the space station. There are the robot arms and Dextre, the “robot hand,” mounted on the outside of the station. And there are the free-floating bowling-ball-sized SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites) that can fly through the space station -- and which can run programs written by college and high school students on Earth!

But Robonaut 2 is a little different. R2 is a little closer to the science-fiction ideal of the “android” member of a spacecraft’s crew, a little slice of “Star Wars” or “Star Trek” brought to life. I had the opportunity to write a feature for students about Robonaut 2 recently, and the potential R2 presents down the road is pretty incredible -- humanoid robots performing spacewalks to repair the space station, or even exploring the surface of other worlds. As the old saying goes, tomorrow’s science fiction is tomorrow’s science fact!