American space agency NASA has been trying hard to make its future space mission more successful and to overcome the associated risks. Recently the agency selected two universities that will be carrying out research and tests of humanoid robots for future space missions.

The robot that the agency gave to the universities for research is known as R5 or 'Valkyrie'. It is a six feet tall robot which weighs around 290 pounds. The design of the robot is not entirely new as it is very much alike Valkyrie from the DARPA Robotics Challenge in late 2013.

As per its makers, it has a superhero kind of a look with a glowing logo of NASA on its chest. Valkyrie has been designed for disaster relief missions; therefore, there is high need to test its designs for future space missions.

MIT and Northeastern University will be getting a Valkyrie prototype as part of the program. The agency has spent a long time on the evaluation of the proposal it received from various institutions before deciding on these two.

As part of the program, both the universities will get a grant of $250,000 per year to fund research into how a humanoid robot would work in space.

The research that will be conducted by both the universities will majorly focus upon virtual simulations of humanoid robots and physical demonstration of advanced tasks using the supplied robots.

The researchers linked to the program will try to find out how a humanoid robot could be operated on its own.