Space rovers are often big machines. The Perseverance and Curiosity rovers driving around Mars are the size of small cars. VIPER, a rover NASA will send to the moon next year, is the size of a golf cart. But a toy-sized Japanese vehicle now shows that mini robots may have a big role to play in the future of space exploration.
The new lunar rover is called SORA-Q. It takes its name from the Japanese words for “space” and “sphere.” About the starting size and shape of a baseball, it weighs as much as a cup of water. But once on the lunar surface, it morphed into a robot that steered itself around, gathering data.
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