Maybe you need to unfold a stuck solar panel in the vacuum of space. Or maybe you need an autonomous probe to make sure the systems on a satellite are functioning properly in geosynchronous orbit. Or maybe, just maybe, you'd like to turn the gunk at the bottom of a nearby riverbed into fuel for exploring the far end of the solar system. If so, stop by the outskirts of Washington, D.C., because that's where the Navy does its work in space robotics. Sure, the Navy usually works to keep the world's waterways open for business. But for decades, the Spacecraft Engineering Department at the Naval Research Laboratory has been the outlet for its more celestial ambitions. The 1958 Vanguard satellite -- the fourth object mankind launched into space -- was one of theirs. These days, the Spacecraft Engineering Department works closely with NASA and the Pentagon futurists at Darpa on the grabbier end of outer-space science projects. As in literally grabby: "Ninety-nine percent of our focus is robotic arms," says space roboticist Greg Scott. Those mechanized arms are designed to perform maintenance tasks on space hardware, and even help the Navy down here on earth. But some of Scott's other space projects involve "some pretty ridiculous science," Scott tells Danger Room -- like these robotic astronauts. BICEP The BICEP started life in 2009 as a Mitsubishi robotic arm, bought off the shelf. When the Naval Research Laboratory was through with it last year, it had become a tool with seven points of robotic articulation to unravel a solar panel that got stuck in a satellite. When rockets launch satellites into space, their solar panels are folded up for proper aerodynamic launch, and sometimes they don't unfold on their own. The "end effectors" -- basically the "hands" on the BICEP's two white arms -- are shaped so the device can "push into a spacecraft body, and then the [solar] panel pops out," Scott explains, either autonomously or under an astronaut's controls. (That thin black-metal plate on the right of the picture is subbing for the solar panel.) Then you're ready to catch some rays. Photo: Naval Research Laboratories

RAFT Refueler Back here on Earth, the Navy's emerging fleet of unmanned ships face a challenge as old as seafaring: staying fueled. So the Naval Research Labs figured its space arms might help by acting as a floating gas station attendant. Scott and his team wrapped a robot arm in a water-resistant coating and connected it to a second, pneumatically-controlled robot arm that looks and acts like an elephant trunk, built by a Clemson University team. With cameras, sensors and software designed by the Research Labs, the Rapid Autonomous Fuel Transfer (RAFT) Refueler autonomously susses out the position of an unmanned boat -- a Sea Fox inflatable, in this case -- finds the fuel port on its own, and gets to work filling up the tank. The flexible, elephant-trunk-like design accommodates refueling in choppy waters. And the RAFT also has a mode for human control, operated by a joystick, and the idea is to use it to provide ship-to-ship refueling -- kind of a nerdy, aquatic counterpart to the Air Force's tanker aircraft. Photo: Naval Research Laboratories

Low-Design Impact Inspection Vehicle (LIIVe) This one is a collaboration between the Naval Research Labs, MIT and the Aurora Flight Sciences unmanned-aircraft company, with funding from Darpa. The Low-Design Impact Inspection Vehicle is a suite of sensors and cameras designed to turn MIT's volleyball-sized floating robots on the International Space Station into autonomous celestial diagnosticians. Three of those robots, shown here and called SPHERES, currently hover around astronauts on the Space Station. In 2008, the Naval Research Labs/MIT/Aurora team built a 10-square centimeter add-on called LIIVe that turns the SPHERES into an inspection vehicle. With a modular sensor containing two visible-light cameras, a wireless connection and a 1-gigahertz processor, the LIIVe box hitches a ride on the propulsion systems of the SPHERES to snoop around the outside of space hardware and autonomously detect if something isn't working like it should -- like say, "if there's micro-meteorite damage," Scott explains. (If there is, it might be time to call in BICEP or FREND.) Back on Earth, the Labs test out the LIIVe-operated SPHERES on a 75,000-pound slab of frictionless granite built like a cosmic air-hockey table, to simulate inertial environments for its heavenward robots. Photo: Darpa

Low-Power Microrobotics Last year, Scott had a theory: you don't need exotic fuel sources to power robots for exploring deep space. You should instead model them on the biological processes used by organisms here on Earth. With $100,000 in NASA grant money, his team at the Labs set to work proving that a robot, properly engineered, could metabolize power. His inspiration was the nasty bacteria found at the bottom of any old riverbed. Scott didn't use many components for his metabolizing machine. He got a pure culture of a single-strand microbe called Geobacter sulfurreducens. Then he got a fuel cell and a capacitor. Finally, to use as his robot, he bought a $10 toy robotic insect called a Hexbug. When Scott hooked everything together, he got his microbe culture hopped up on sugar. Sure enough, its digestion discharged hydrogen ions. The ions permeated the membrane in the fuel cell, and the equivalent electron freed through the process was captured in the capacitor -- and once the capacitor released its energy, it powered the toy's motor. By the middle of the year, Scott got his Hexbug running for up to 14 seconds. Naturally, there's a long way to go before the Naval Research Labs are ready to take the design into space. A next step is to see if the microbes can handle the high-radiation, low-thermal environment of deep space. If so, then theoretically, if you've got enough sugar, the microbes will eat, thrive, reproduce, and keep the robots going. To think, the amateurs at Star Fleet plan on using dilithium crystals to power their spacecraft. Photo: Naval Research Laboratories