7 Dec

Johns Hopkins Gazette

Johns Hopkins engineers, recognized as experts in medical robotics, have turned their attention skyward to help NASA with a space dilemma: How can the agency fix valuable satellites that are breaking down or running out of fuel? Sending a human repair crew into space is costly, dangerous and sometimes not even possible for satellites in a distant orbit. One answer: Send robots to the rescue and give them a little long-distance human help. To move toward these goals, NASA provided a research grant to West Virginia University, which in turn picked Johns Hopkins as a partner because of the school’s expertise in medical robotics.:

http://gazette.jhu.edu/2011/12/05/space-surgeons/

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-12/da-vinci-surgery-bot-could-be-dispatched-fix-ailing-satellites