GoKawiilCaltech's ASTRA robot assembles antenna frame sections in orbit for the first time
Caltech's ASTRA robot, a roughly one-cubic-meter device with a gantry arm, motorized dispensers and 11 cameras, has assembled part of an antenna frame while in low Earth orbit by pulling composite tubes and aluminum joints from onboard dispensers. The full antenna requires 11 sections spanning 1.4 meters, but only three are complete so far, with the mission ending in December before the frame is finished.
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Building structures in space rather than folding them to fit inside a rocket could eventually allow much larger hardware than current nose-cone limits permit, as seen with the folded mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope. DARPA funded the flight through its NOM4D program, suggesting interest in eventually constructing structures hundreds of feet long from raw parts launched into orbit, though the process still relied on ground operators sending commands and troubleshooting issues on an identical lab unit rather than being fully autonomous.
- ASTRA assembled three of eleven planned antenna frame sections in orbit before the mission ends in December.
- The robot used a gantry arm and dispensers to combine composite tubes and aluminum joints, guided by three ground-based team members.
- DARPA's NOM4D program backed the test as part of efforts to build larger space structures without relying on folding components to fit rockets.
Source: techspot.com — Zo Ahmed, 2026-11-11
Published there as: “Caltech robot makes history by assembling first structure in orbit without astronauts”
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