MIT undergrads, inspired by the floating battle droid in the original Star Wars movie, built five working droids about the size of soccer balls for project SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold Engage Re-orient Experimental Satellite). Red, the oldest of the quintuplets, is already onboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Unlike its movie counterpart, Red was not designed to teach ISS crewmembers in using light saberswords blindfolded. It's actually a tiny satellite, part of a trio that NASA will send to the space station. One more SPHERES (Blue) will join it later this year via space shuttle Discovery. The third one (Yellow) will be carried to orbit by a future shuttle mission. Together, Red, Blue and Yellow will navigate though the corridors of ISS learning how to fly in formation.

Tiny satellites are the iPods of space exploration. They're hot, hot, hot! One day they could replace big, heavy satellites. Lots of these mini-satts can orbit Earth in tandem. Each will do a specific job but contribute to the overall mission. In the event that one of Red's brothers is torched by a solar flare, the others  can close ranks and carry on. Another advantage of the mini-satts is that they cost less to build and transport to space. But first they have to learn to fly in formation which turns out to be a major challenge.

Meanwhile, Red is already busy in space doing a variety of maneuvers, loops and turns and solving problems. Astronauts tried to trick Red by causing one of its thrusters to stick "on." The robot diagnosed the fault, turned the thruster off, and returned to station-keeping. "Not bad for one little droid," says SPHERE project head and MIT engineering Professor David Miller "I can’t wait to see what three of them can do." One possible use for them is building a moonship piece by piece in Earth orbit. "Software designed to control small satellites could just as well be used to maneuver the pieces of a spaceship together," says Miller.