That includes SpaceHopper, a three-legged robot designed for exploring microgravity environments, like the surface of asteroids. Developed by university students at ETH Zurich, in Switzerland, it bends its legs to propel itself off the ground. “But we can build robots that could do this task for us.”ETH Zurich student Valerio Schelbert holds SpaceHopper. A three-legged hopping robot that can reorient itself in zero gravity is “a completely new idea,” said Florian Kehl, a lecturer in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences of ETH Zurich. The team behind LunarLeaper, including ETH Zurich academics, hope to use it to explore a pit thought to be connected to a subsurface hollow lava tube.

---

Persons: Valerio Schelbert, Andrew Waller, ”, Florian Kehl, SpaceHopper, CNN “ Organizations: CNN, Apollo, Earth’s, ETH Zurich, SpaceHopper, ” ETH Zurich, Department of, Planetary Sciences, European Space Agency, ESA, Tech Locations: Switzerland, California, Japan, Germany, France