Gadgetory

this is NASA's latest tech toy spheres soccer ball-sized robots that fly freely in space wondering why they look familiar one of the inspirations for this was the the lightsaber trainer droid from Star Wars remember luke skywalker and the Millennium Falcon trained with it spheres which stands for synchronized position hold engage reorient experimental satellites are a type of nanosatellite basically a miniature satellite powering these extraterrestrial robots is a device well known to Earthlings a smartphone the google nexus s we needed to have cameras gyroscopes it'd be nice if it had a screen we wanted Wi-Fi capability which the sphere didn't actually have and as we laid up all of these requirements we realized very quickly that the smartphone might be a good way to go why build all that technology from scratch when you can buy it at a relatively cheaper price off the shelf with budgets being constantly under pressure to do more with less we can build launch fly test and then do it again actually you know months later using small spacecraft and that helps us to advance technology we hope a lot more quickly spheres are controlled remotely from space or ground control three are already in use on the International Space Station when the computer decides to open one of these thrusters than co2 gas is expelled and it's the combination of those different thrusters that allows it to move around on station NASA Ames researchers have embedded smartphones in another nanosatellite about the size of a tissue box phonesat we've actually removed the batteries you can't put your simple rechargeable lithium-ion battery up in space and expect it to last for a long time so we've replaced that with an nickel-cadmium batteries and a big power pack that can last a long time these nano satellites are modular so NASA can launch them in groups of 38 or one day even hundreds if one of them breaks you just add a new one you still have the functionality of the whole the whole system phone sets inaugural launch is set for late April nASA says it wants to prove the technology's capabilities it's going to do it's basic Sputnik moma where it's going to go beep beep you know tell us it I'm here I'm Allah give us what we call housekeeping data says I'm this hot on this cold I'm pointed this way here's the magnetic field these nano satellites have great potential for moon exploration or to test technologies for spaceflight they may also eliminate the need for flight crew to perform risky spacewalks to be used to go outside of a vehicle like space station and to fly around it to do inspections looking for damage or other things that the ground controllers just can't see with from the ground the stuff of sci fi minus the lightsaber training in Mountain View California I'm Sumi das cnet.com for CBS News