Robonaut 2 Answers Your Tweets ... From Space!

When the Space Shuttle Discovery took off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., yesterday, it wasn't just carrying human astronauts. The additional passenger was Robonaut 2, or R2, the first humanoid robot in space.

For the time being R2 is a simple-looking, legless robot. Eventually, though, NASA will add some sort of lower half, perhaps in the form of a four-wheel rover. 

During the final Discovery mission, R2 will spend most of its time on the International Space Station undergoing long series of tests. NASA hopes to discover how well R2 handles the rigors of spaceflight and a zero-gravity environment for extended periods of time. In its free time, R2 will also be tweeting from space. So far, it (or its astronaut counterparts, that is) has been very good about answering its adoring public's tweets.

Perhaps, one day, space missions will be flown entirely by humanoid robots -- a move that would save NASA untold amounts of money and liability. I for one can't wait until the day an entire team of R2s land on Mars.