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Awesome Space Robotics Awesome

Robotic systems designed for space environments.

Contents

Hardware Platforms

Surface Vehicles

  • CADRE - Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration, a NASA JPL project deploying a team of shoebox-sized rovers to the Moon.
  • Curiosity - NASA's car-sized Mars rover powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator.
  • ExoMy - Open source build-it-yourself rover developed by ESA.
  • JPL Open Source Rover - Open source build-it-yourself rover developed by JPL.
  • LEMUR - Limbed Excursion Mechanical Utility Robot developed by JPL.
  • Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit & Opportunity) - NASA's twin solar-powered rovers with rocker-bogie suspension and a five-degree-of-freedom instrument arm.
  • MASCOT - Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout developed by DLR and CNES.
  • Perseverance - NASA's Mars rover that landed in Jezero Crater in 2021.
  • RASSOR - Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot developed by NASA Kennedy Space Center.
  • RoboSimian - Four-limbed robot developed by JPL with seven degrees of freedom per limb.
  • Sojourner - NASA's first Mars rover, a 10.6 kg six-wheeled microrobot that landed in 1997 as part of the Mars Pathfinder mission.

Aerial Vehicles

  • Dragonfly - NASA dual-quadcopter rotorcraft designed to fly on Saturn's moon Titan.
  • Ingenuity - NASA's 1.8 kg coaxial-rotor helicopter that achieved the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.

Free-Flying Robots

  • Astrobee - Free-flying robotic system developed by NASA to assist astronauts inside the ISS.
  • Int-Ball2 - Second-generation free-flying camera robot developed by JAXA for the ISS Kibo module.

Robotic Manipulators

  • Canadarm2 - Robotic arm on the ISS built by MDA for the Canadian Space Agency.
  • Canadarm3 - Next-generation robotic system being developed by MDA for the Lunar Gateway.
  • Dextre - Two-armed dexterous manipulator on the ISS that serves as a robotic handyman for delicate maintenance tasks.
  • ERA - European Robotic Arm installed on the Russian segment of the ISS.
  • GITAI Inchworm Robot - Robotic arm developed by GITAI for in-orbit and lunar surface operations.
  • JEM-RMS - Japanese Experiment Module Remote Manipulator System on the ISS Kibo module.

Humanoids

  • Robonaut 2 (R2) - Humanoid robot developed by NASA to assist astronauts onboard the ISS.
  • Rollin' Justin - Mobile humanoid robot developed by DLR with two torque-controlled arms and dexterous hands mounted on a wheeled platform.
  • Valkyrie (R5) - NASA's bipedal humanoid robot designed for disaster response and space exploration.

Software Frameworks

Robotics Middleware

  • Robot Operating System (ROS) - Open source middleware framework widely used in space robotics for development and ground testing.
  • Space ROS - Fork of ROS 2 that aims to align with the safety and reliability requirements of space missions.

Flight & Ground Software

  • core Flight System (cFS) - NASA's platform-independent and mission-independent flight software framework.

  • F´ (F-Prime) - Component-driven framework for spaceflight applications and embedded systems with limited resources.

  • Yamcs - Open source mission control framework for command and control of spacecraft, satellites, payloads, and ground equipment.

Mission Planning

  • GMAT - General Mission Analysis Tool, NASA's open source space mission design tool for trajectory optimization and mission planning.
  • SPICE Toolkit - NASA's observation geometry system used for space science mission planning and data analysis.

Simulation Environments

General Purpose

  • Gazebo - Open source robotics simulator that provides accurate physics simulation, sensor models, and 3D visualization.
  • Isaac Sim - NVIDIA's robotics simulation platform built on Omniverse.
  • Project Chrono - Open source multi-physics simulation engine handling rigid and flexible body dynamics, collision detection, and vehicle-terrain interaction.

Space Robotics

  • DARTS - Dynamics Algorithms for Real-Time Simulation developed by JPL.
  • PANGU - Planet and Asteroid Natural Scene Generation Utility developed by the University of Dundee for ESA.
  • Space Robotics Bench (SRB) (Disclosure: Created by the author of this list) - Collection of environments and tasks for space robotics research built on NVIDIA Isaac Sim.
  • Space ROS Demos - Collection of Space ROS simulation examples featuring Canadarm2, Curiosity rover, and lunar terrain environments.

Spacecraft Dynamics

  • 42 - NASA Goddard's general-purpose spacecraft simulation environment.

  • Basilisk - Astrodynamics simulation framework developed at the University of Colorado Boulder.

  • Trick - NASA's simulation development framework that provides common simulation capabilities for rapid prototyping of space vehicle simulations.

Verification & Validation

Terrestrial Analogue Sites

  • Atacama Desert - Chile: One of the driest places on Earth, used as a Mars analogue for testing rover autonomy and astrobiology experiments.
  • Devon Island - Canada: The largest uninhabited island on Earth, hosting the Haughton-Mars Project for testing rover operations.
  • Iceland - Volcanic island used extensively by NASA and ESA as a planetary analogue.
  • Lanzarote - Spain: Volcanic island in the Canary Islands used by ESA as an analogue site for lunar and planetary exploration testing.
  • Mount Etna - Italy: Active volcano with fresh volcanic soils and lava flows, serving as a lunar and Martian analogue.

Laboratory Facilities

  • ESA Orbital Robotics Laboratory - Netherlands: Testbed at ESA's ESTEC featuring Europe's largest 2D free-floating platform with air-bearing systems that simulate microgravity.
  • JPL Mars Yard - USA: Outdoor test facility at JPL designed to emulate the Martian surface. It is used for testing rover mobility on terrain representative of Mars.
  • LUNA - Germany: ESA-DLR LUNA analogue facility at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne. It features a large regolith testbed for testing lunar surface operations.
  • LunaLab - Luxembourg: Moon analogue facility at the University of Luxembourg. It features an indoor basalt gravel area to simulate the lunar surface.
  • Spaceport Rostock - Germany: Testing facility at Rostock-Laage Airport featuring a test track for lunar and space vehicles and microgravity testing infrastructure for space research.
  • TRON - Germany: Testbed for Robotic Optical Navigation at the DLR Institute of Space Systems in Bremen. A hardware-in-the-loop facility for validating optical navigation sensors.
  • Zero-G Lab - Luxembourg: Facility at the University of Luxembourg designed for testing 2D and 3D free-floating robotic systems in microgravity conditions.

Runtime Verification

  • Copilot - NASA's runtime verification framework that generates constant-time, constant-memory C99 monitors from high-level Haskell specifications.
  • OGMA - NASA tool for generating safe runtime monitors for flight and robotic applications.

Perception

  • Ames Stereo Pipeline (ASP) - NASA's open source suite for generating digital terrain models, orthoimages, and 3D point clouds from satellite, rover, and aerial stereo imagery.
  • VICAR - Video Image Communication And Retrieval, JPL's open source image processing system developed since 1966.

Navigation

Planetary Navigation

Orbital Navigation

  • dSGP4 - ESA's differentiable SGP4 orbital propagation library reimplemented with PyTorch automatic differentiation support.
  • Orekit - Open source low-level space dynamics library written in Java.

Manipulation

Motion Planning

  • MoveIt - Open source general-purpose motion planning framework built on top of ROS.
  • OMPL - Open Motion Planning Library, a collection of sampling-based motion planning algorithms.

Dynamics & Control

  • Drake - Model-based design and verification toolbox for robotics developed at MIT and now maintained by Toyota Research Institute.
  • Pinocchio - Fast and flexible C++ library for rigid body dynamics algorithms.

Human-Robot Interaction

  • METERON - Multi-purpose End-To-End Robotic Operation Network, an ESA project for teleoperation of robots on Earth from the ISS.

  • OpenMCT - Open source mission control framework developed by NASA Ames.

Robot Learning

  • Space Robotics Bench (SRB) (Disclosure: Created by the author of this list) - Suite of GPU-accelerated environments for space robotics reinforcement learning built on NVIDIA Isaac Lab.

Space Exploration

Lunar

  • Astrobotic Peregrine - First mission under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, launched in January 2024.
  • Blue Ghost - Firefly Aerospace's lunar lander selected under NASA's CLPS program.
  • Chandrayaan-3 - ISRO's lunar mission that successfully soft-landed the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover near the lunar south pole in 2023.
  • Chang'e Program - China's lunar exploration program operated by CNSA.
  • Lunokhod Program - Soviet robotic lunar rover program that deployed the first remote-controlled rovers on another world.
  • LUPEX - Lunar Polar Exploration mission jointly developed by JAXA and ISRO.
  • Nova-C (Odysseus) - Intuitive Machines' IM-1 lunar lander that became the first commercial spacecraft to soft-land on the Moon in February 2024.
  • SLIM - Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, JAXA's precision lunar landing demonstrator that touched down in January 2024.
  • VIPER - Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, a NASA lunar rover designed to map water ice deposits at the Moon's south pole.

Mars

  • ExoMars - ESA's mission to search for signs of past life on Mars.
  • Mars 2020 - NASA mission that landed the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter in Jezero Crater in 2021.
  • Mars Exploration Rovers - NASA's twin-rover mission that landed Spirit and Opportunity on Mars in 2004 to search for evidence of past water activity.
  • Mars Pathfinder - NASA's first rover mission to Mars, which landed in 1997.
  • Mars Science Laboratory - NASA mission that landed the Curiosity rover in Gale Crater in 2012.
  • Tianwen-1 - China's first Mars mission, which landed the Zhurong rover in Utopia Planitia in 2021.

Saturn

  • Dragonfly - NASA rotorcraft lander planned for Saturn's moon Titan.

Small Bodies

  • Hayabusa2 - JAXA's asteroid sample-return mission to Ryugu.
  • MMX - Martian Moons eXploration, JAXA's mission to return samples from Mars's moon Phobos.
  • OSIRIS-REx - NASA's asteroid sample-return mission to Bennu.
  • Rosetta - ESA's Rosetta spacecraft orbited comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and deployed the Philae lander in November 2014, achieving the first-ever landing on a comet.
  • Tianwen-2 - CNSA mission launched in 2025 to collect samples from near-Earth asteroid Kamoʻoalewa and return them to Earth.

Assembly & Servicing

On-Orbit Servicing

  • ADRAS-J - Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan, a JAXA-contracted mission launched in 2024.
  • ClearSpace-1 - ESA-commissioned mission to remove a piece of space debris from orbit, planned as the first active debris removal mission.
  • Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV) - Northrop Grumman's satellite life-extension spacecraft.
  • Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV) - Northrop Grumman's next-generation servicing spacecraft designed to perform hands-on satellite maintenance in GEO.
  • RSGS - Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites, a DARPA program to develop a robotic servicing vehicle for GEO satellites.

Education

Study Programmes

Demos

Web

  • Eyes on the Solar System - NASA's real-time 3D visualization of the solar system.
  • JPL Open Source Rover (Homepage) - Simulated Mars rover that can be controlled through a simple teleoperation interface.
  • KeepTrack - Open source web application for visualizing satellites and space debris in real time.
  • LeoLabs Visualization - Interactive 3D visualization of tracked objects in low Earth orbit.
  • Mars Trek - NASA's web-based portal for exploring the surface of Mars using data from multiple missions.
  • Moon Trek - NASA's web-based portal for interactive exploration of the lunar surface.

Datasets

Assets

Imagery & Terrain

Spacecraft Pose & Proximity

  • SPARK - SPAcecraft Recognition leveraging Knowledge dataset from the University of Luxembourg.
  • SPEED+ - Spacecraft Pose Estimation Dataset, providing synthetic and real images of satellites with ground truth 6-DOF pose labels.

Competitions

Robotic Challenges

Organizations

Governmental

  • ASI - Italy: Italian Space Agency.
  • CNES - France: Centre National d'Études Spatiales.
  • CNSA - China: China National Space Administration.
  • CSA - Canada: Canadian Space Agency.
  • DLR - Germany: German Aerospace Center, Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics.
  • ESA - Europe: European Space Agency.
  • ISRO - India: Indian Space Research Organisation.
  • JAXA - Japan: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
  • KASA - South Korea: Korea AeroSpace Administration.
  • NASA - USA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
  • NASA ARC - USA: NASA Ames Research Center.
  • NASA GSFC - USA: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
  • NASA JPL - USA: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
  • NASA JSC - USA: NASA Johnson Space Center.
  • UKSA - United Kingdom: UK Space Agency.

Academic

Corporate

  • Astrobotic - USA: Lunar logistics and delivery services.
  • Astroscale - Japan/UK: On-orbit servicing and debris removal.
  • ClearSpace - Switzerland: Space debris removal and in-orbit servicing.
  • GITAI - Japan/USA: Space robotics and labor automation.
  • Honeybee Robotics (Blue Origin) - USA: Spacecraft mechanisms and planetary drilling systems, now a subsidiary of Blue Origin.
  • Intuitive Machines - USA: Lunar landers and space infrastructure.
  • ispace - Japan: Lunar exploration and resource development.
  • MDA - Canada: Canadarm, robotics, and satellite systems.
  • Motiv Space Systems - USA: Robotic arms and actuators for space.
  • Northrop Grumman - USA: Satellite servicing and space logistics.
  • Redwire Space - USA: In-space manufacturing and robotics.
  • Starfish Space - USA: Satellite servicing and space sustainability.

Recurring Events

Conferences

  • ASTRA - Advanced Space Technologies for Robotics and Automation, ESA's symposium on space robotics held biennially at ESTEC.
  • i-SAIRAS - International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space.
  • IAC - International Astronautical Congress, the world's largest annual gathering of space professionals.
  • ICRA - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
  • IROS - IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.
  • iSpaRo - International Conference on Space Robotics.
  • SPAICE - ESA academic conference on AI in and for space.

Contributions are welcome! Please read the contribution guidelines before submitting a pull request.