Technology AI, Science and New Things
China is sending a six-legged flying robot to the Moon to hunt for lunar ice on the underexplored lunar south pole. The 2026 Chang’e-7 mission will deploy the flying detector to hunt for water, with an eye to creating the first moon settlement.
Tang Yuhua, deputy chief designer, described the detector as an “extremely smart robot” that can climb, crawl, leap and use rockets to fly.
Previous lunar explorers have been limited by their wheels, confined to a small radius around their landing site.
The flying space robot, however, can leap dozens of kilometres and enter deep shadowed craters where frozen water has avoided the Sun’s rays.
Moon water was formed when the planetoid was created and added to by comets and asteroids, but solar radiation has evaporated all but the most deeply hidden ice.
China’s follow-up bot, the Chang’e-8, aims to use any water supplied to create drinking water, oxygen and rocket fuel for a future Moon base.
