A steam-powered spacecraft which can hop between asteroids and moons indefinitely by mining water from beneath their surface, is being funded by Nasa. The space rock hopper has been designed to never run out of fuel because it uses steam as a propellant which if can harvest from wherever it lands. Dubbed the ‘World is Not Enough’ spacecraft, or Wine, the machine has been developed by the University of Central Florida and the private space company Honeybee Robotics. To test the hopper, researchers simulated the surface of an asteroid to see if it could successfully extract water and create steam. Planetary research scientist Phil Metzger from the University of Central Florida said: “Wine successfully mined the soil, made rocket propellant, and launched itself on a jet of steam extracted from the simulant. “We could potentially use this technology to hop on the Moon, Ceres, Europa, Titan, Pluto, the poles of Mercury, asteroids – anywhere there is water and sufficiently low gravity.” The spacecraft lifted off for about a meter inside a vacuum chamber at Honeybee's Pasadena facility. The Wine space hopper It is designed to fly on and around bodies that have less gravity on Earth, so it could bounce to several miles on a moon like Europa, or it could leave an asteroid and blast off to its next target. Currently space missions are limited by fuel, but the spacecraft uses deployable solar panels to get enough energy for mining and making steam so it can refuel wherever it goes, allowing for continued exploration . “Wine was designed to never run out of propellant so exploration will be less expensive,” added Dr Metzger. “It also allows us to explore in a shorter amount of time since we don't have to wait for years as a new spacecraft travels from Earth each time.” The project is a result of the Nasa Small Business Technology Transfer programme, which encourages universities to partner with tech companies. “The project has been a collaborative effort between NASA, academia, and industry; and it has been a tremendous success," said Kris Zacny, vice president of Honeybee Robotics. “These spacecrafts have the potential to change how we explore the universe.”