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Russia’s android robot arrives at Baikonur spaceport for flight to orbital outpost

The robot is expected to stay a week and a half in orbit

Russia’s humanoid robot FEDOR Donat Sorokin/TASS

Russia’s humanoid robot FEDOR

© Donat Sorokin/TASS

MOSCOW, July 23. /TASS/. Russia’s Skybot F-850 android robot has arrived at the Baikonur spaceport for its travel to the International Space Station (ISS) in August, Head of the State Space Corporation Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin tweeted on Tuesday.

"Half an hour ago, the Skybot F-850 avatar robot arrived at Baikonur," the Roscosmos chief wrote on his Tweeter.

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Sending FEDOR to ISS to be first step in space research by humanoid robots — Roscosmos

The android robot will join the Russian crew of the International Space Station on August 22 to continue the tests of "the space-designated anthropomorphous system," Rogozin specified.

The Skybot F-850 android robot (previously called Fedor) has been developed by Android Technology Company and the Advanced Research Fund on a technical assignment from Russia’s Emergencies Ministry. The ‘Rescuer’ robot demonstration prototype was made in 2016. Initially, the robot was dubbed the Avatar but later got its own name FEDOR (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research). In 2018, the FEDOR’s exhibition model for the All-Russian Exhibition Center (VDNKh) in Moscow was created.

The robot is expected to stay a week and a half in orbit, after which it will return to Earth. In the future, the Skybot F-850 will travel to the Moon. Such flights will be performed before manned missions to the Earth’s natural satellite.

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