A shoebox-sized rover is expected to belay down from a lunar lander to the south pole of the moon potentially within the year in part to help test out remote-control software. 

Astrobotic, a Pennsylvania-based company, is building the tiny rover planned to travel as part of a much larger mission that will also take NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover to the moon to look for ice, said Mike Provenzano, director of lunar surface systems for the company. He spoke to the media at Space Symposium in Colorado Springs on Monday. 

The rover will use Canadian-based Mission Control Space Service Inc.’s Space Farer software to remotely control it and further the company’s efforts to develop artificial intelligence to guide vehicles in space, said Ewan Reid, founder and CEO of the company. 

“On this mission, we’ll be looking at classifying the terrain in front of the rover to understand what kind of terrain it is, and then using that to make decisions about where we can drive safely,” he said. 

Both the cube rover and the software are intended for the commercial market. 

Provenzano said he expected the cube rover platform could carry scientific instruments for clients. The company can also easily enlarge the rover without additional design costs. 

Reid said he hopes in the relatively near term Space Farer will be used to operate robotics on many other mission on the moon, in orbit and potentially in deep space. 

The Canadian Space Agency invested in Mission Control and its president Lisa Campbell lauded the announcement on Monday. 

“What an exciting time in space exploration as commercial companies are at the very beginning of creating a new market and economy,” she said. 

The cube rover is expected to operate for one lunar day or almost 26 hours, Provenzano said. 

Once the lander arrives the rover will descend from cables wrapped around its wheels.

“When it’s time to descend, we rotate our wheels, and then we kind of belay ourselves down,” he said. 

Astrobotic is also building the Griffin Lander expected to carry the cube rover, a mission that may face more scrutiny after the company had to abandoned a moon landing in January when its lander suffered a serious propellant leak. 

“Right now, we are solely focused on making sure that Griffin lands successfully on moon,” Provenzano said.