NASA Will Pay 1 Million If You Can Make This Robot Ready For Mars

NASA's six foot, 300-pound humanoid robot is looking for a programmer. This week, NASA announced the start of the Space Robotics Challenge, a 1 million contest to program a virtual robot. Competing teams will be tasked with programming Robonaut 5, a humanoid robot, how to perform damage control after a Martian dust storm that has damaged a habitat. As part of this, they'll need to use the robot to complete three objectives: align a communications dish, repair a solar array, and fix a leak in the hab. Registration is open now, with the final round of competition held in June 2017. Robonaut also goes by the name Valkyrie at MIT, which we first met in 2013 as a DARPA challenge entrant.