Hundreds of kilometres below ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano’s floating feet on the Interntaional Space Station, a robot on Earth obeyed the European astronaut’s commands. NASA’s K10 planetary rover, a small, four-wheel robot, scouted a rocky, lunar-like terrain in the US.
Earlier on Luca’s mission, his crewmate, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, drove K10 from space around the Roverscape, an outdoor field at the NASA Ames Research Center in California, USA.
Space exploration will most likely involve sending robotic explorers to test the waters on uncharted planets before sending humans to land. ESA and NASA are running tests to prepare for these robotic explorers.