Sora-Q by Japan-based toy company TOMY is a mini moon exploration robot that comes in at just eight centimeters in diameter and just 250 grams. The handheld robot gets its name from the words for “sky” and “sphere” and the tiny moon rover is the newest creation from the company that created Transformers, and TOMY designed this toy for the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA.
The rolling lunar robot caught a ride on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that catapulted the world’s first commercial lunar lander, ispace’s Hakuto-R M1, toward the moon. Another SORA-Q will be carried aboard slim, a JAXA lander set to touch down in 2023.
Split in half, the Sora-Q will unfold to expose a pair of cameras and divide its hemispheres into wheels.
