An engineer in white protective gear, a blue mask, and glasses works on a small rover. The rover is small enough to fit on a black tabletop. The rover has a flat top and four gear-like wheels.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

An engineer prepares a small rover for testing in a thermal vacuum chamber on Oct. 24, 2023, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. This rover is part of the agency’s Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration (CADRE) technology demonstration that’s headed to the Moon as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. CADRE is designed to demonstrate that multiple robots can cooperate and explore together autonomously – without direct input from human mission controllers.

Learn more about these miniature rovers.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech