Robot could ready Red Planet for humans

Years from now, a robotic astronaut named Val could walk across the dusty Martian terrain to greet a spaceship carrying humans ready to colonize the Red Planet. How well the robot does that job will fall to some Bay State universities, who are playing a key role in teaching Val how to be an astronaut's best friend. "What she will be able to do, hopefully, is just about everything that a suited astronaut in a planetary field could do," said Kris Ver deyen, NASA project manager for Val. "This is NASA's first foray into a bipedal motion robot, so we're basically learning the ropes as we go." Val -- short for Valkyrie -- is a 6-foot, 2-inch, 300-pound mass of metal, wires and plastic that was delivered to University of Massachusetts Lowell at 6:30 yesterday morning, along with a squad of NASA engineers, who put together the robot piece by piece.