TOKYO (AFP) – On board Japan’s ‘Moon Sniper’ spacecraft is a little robot with a big mission: to pop open like a Transformer toy, wiggle across the lunar surface and beam images back to Earth.
The shape-shifting SORA-Q probe – co-developed by a major toy company – has been compared to a friendly Star Wars droid and a sea turtle because of the way its metal form can navigate the dusty Moonscape.
But the gadget’s chance to boldly go depends on the success of the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission, with a spacecraft dubbed the ‘Moon Sniper’ by space agency JAXA for its precision landing capabilities.
Slightly bigger than a tennis ball and weighing as much as a large potato – eight centimetres across and 250 grammes – SORA-Q was designed by JAXA with Takara Tomy, the toy company behind the original 1984 Transformers.
Sony Group and Doshisha University in Kyoto also helped develop the device, which has a front camera on an orange panel that emerges when the its metal frame snaps open, and another on its back.
Instead of rolling on wheels, the two halves of the sphere are designed to slot out and move in tandem to propel SORA-Q along the rocky surface, a design that reduces size and weight.
If the mission succeeds, the probe’s cameras will take valuable images of a crater where parts of the Moon’s mantle, usually hidden deep below its crust, are believed to be exposed.
