Telerobotic Exploration of the Solar System

In the same way that the launches of Yuri Gagarin and Alan Sheppard in 196 1 announced the beginning of human space flight, recent utilization of robots for space exploration is heralding the start of a new era of space robotics. After a gap of twelve years since the introduction of a new capability in space remote manipulation, five new robotic systems have been launched to explore the solar system in the last five years and more than a dozen more are planned to fly over the next decade.