Astronaut Rick Mastracchio works with a pair of basketball-sized, free-flying satellites known Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites, or SPHERES.
ISS038-E-035434 (23 Jan. 2014) — NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio, Expedition 38 flight engineer, works with a pair of basketball-sized, free-flying satellites known Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites, or SPHERES, in the Kibo laboratory of the International Space Station. For this experiment session, the crew members equipped one of the two SPHERES with a pair of stereoscopic goggles dubbed the Visual Estimation and Relative Tracking for Inspection of Generic Objects, or VERTIGO. As the second SPHERES tumbled and spun, the VERTIGO-equipped robot attempted to map it and perform relative navigation around it.