Media Lab + Castrol Collaboration: Somewhere like the moon

Before researchers send a project like AstroAnt—a tiny robot meant to conduct inspections and diagnostic tasks on the external surfaces of spacecraft, rovers, and landers—to the lunar surface, they have to test it somewhere like the moon. With support from our industry collaborator Castrol, the Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) took AstroAnt and a number of other projects to the volcanic landscape of Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands. This beautiful locale provides a valuable analog environment for space exploration, letting researchers test the limits of their equipment.