As if it isn’t already hard enough to get kids (and some adult manchildren) to stop playing video games and get off the couch, now they may not even have the option of dreaming of becoming an astronaut and exploring the universe. NASA has partnered with a small robotics firm in Texas called Apptronik to continue the space agency’s decades of work developing humanoid robots. They then want to send these humanoid robots into space and entrust them to explore the moon and Mars.

So congrats to Apptronik and their ‘Apollo’ space robot for securing a SBIR grant to develop a humanoid robot to handle terrestrial tasks like logistics, manufacturing, and home healthcare assistance here on Earth. Turns out NASA has sky high hopes for sending robots into the heavens instead of human beings.

NASA hopes humanoid robots can help us explore the moon and Mars