Here is a video from NASA successfully attempting to let a robotic lander land on its own.   NASA’s robotic lander mission team is currently testing these robots space landers to land sucesccfully on the moon, asteroids and other planets without the help or direction of people.

@yungjohnnybravo @TatWZA

 

These tests NASA are conducting are important because engineers at NASA can not rely on parachutes and airbags to successfully land a unmanned space vehicle for a safe landing. With these robots being so far away from earth, it would take a significant amount of time for signals to reach these robots and control them properly.

NASA is hoping one day they may be able to send empty spacecrafts or robots on their own to explore other planets and surfaces without any human instructions. Once NASA perfects the landing with the robots, they hope the robots will never have to come back to earth. At the current time NASA hasn’t given a time scale in which the robots will take flight