A small quadrupedal robot named'SpaceBok' is set to be the first powered machine to walk across the surface of Mars. Other rovers on the Red Planet, such as NASA's Perseverance and Curiosity, sport gigantic wheels that limit where they can travel. However, SpaceBok's four legs will allow it to climb over rough terrain and possibly search for signs of life that may have otherwise gone unnoticed. The robot was initially developed to trek across the moon and was programmed to leap instead of walk, but SpaceBok's makers have redesigned it to take on Mars. A small quadrupedal robot named'SpaceBok' will be the first powered machine to walk across the surface of Mars It is not clear when SpaceBok will venture to Mars, but DailyMail.com

From the Sojourner rover, which landed on Mars in 1997, to Perseverance, which touched down in February, the robots of the Red Planet share a defining feature: wheels. Rolling is far more stable and energy efficient than walking, which even robots on Earth still struggle to master. After all, NASA would hate for its very expensive Martian explorer to topple over and flail around like a turtle on its back. The problem with wheels, though, is that they limit where rovers can go: To explore complicated Martian terra like steep hills, you need the kinds of legs that evolution gave animals on Earth. So a team of scientists from ETH Zurich in Switzerland and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany have been playing around with a small quadrupedal robot called SpaceBok, designed to mimic an antelope known as a springbok.