Forget the perfectly chiselled jaw and the stirring speech about mankind’s destiny; turns out, the ultimate moon explorer needs the upper half of a human fused with the lower half of a four-legged rover. Enter GITAI’s R1, a truly brilliant bit of kit that looks like it galloped straight out of a sci-fi epic. This centaur-esque marvel is engineered to scoff at the Moon’s notoriously tricky sandy and rocky terrain, letting our squishy human counterparts remotely assemble equipment without the rather inconvenient – and frankly, fiddly – business of a life-support system. Essentially, the top-tier operative for off-world antics is one that won’t complain about the galactic commute, demand a decent cuppa, or, crucially, require an entire atmosphere just to function. Now that’s what we call a cosmic game-changer.
