China’s New Space Robot Looks Like an Iron Man Knockoff

At the 17th China International Industry Fair in Shanghai, China’s space agency rolled out their new Mars Probe, which consists of a new orbiter and landing rover, and while normally that would be the star of the show, it certainly wasn’t. The new space-faring robot known as Xiaotian is a lawsuit waiting to happen, sporting some very familiar Iron Man colours and a check piece that looks to be a knock-off arc reactor, albeit a fake one, not a real arc reactor, that would be a tad implausible to say the least.

As I was saying, the robot (pictured above) looks a lot like Robert Downey Jr’s version of Iron Man (pictured below, obviously).

The new robot, Xiaotian, which translates as “little sky”, was developed by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., which is the nation’s primary space contractor; let’s just hope their tech department is a little more creative than their design team.

The robot is designed to deal with the harsh environment of space, to perform tasks in zero gravity on space stations, lunar landings, space probes and more. It uses flexible arms and hands, allowing it to do intricate work. Unfortunately, there are no plans to put Iron Man, erm, I mean Xiaotian in space just yet.