Russia’s android robot to travel from Baikonur, to stay 4 more days in orbit than planned

MOSCOW. KAZINFORM The return of the Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft with the android robot Fedor, which is due to travel to the International Space Station (ISS) on August 22 from Baikonur spaceport, has been rescheduled for September 7, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos told TASS.

«The landing of the Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft has been rescheduled from September 3 for September 7,» the federal space agency said, TASS reports.

A Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket is set to blast off on August 22 to deliver the Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft with the android robot into orbit. Russia will use this type of carrier rockets for the first time to deliver the Soyuz spacecraft to the orbital outpost. The spacecraft will travel to the space station in its crewless mode.

The android robot 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.

Before its travel to the space station in August, the android robot has got its own name of Skybot F-850 where the letter F stands for its affiliation with the Fedor family of robots. On July 23, the Fedor opened its own account in Twitter.