This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. The world no doubt thought following NASA’s incredible achievement in 1969 that lunar exploration would become routine. As it turned out man last visited the moon just 3 years later, leaving a vast 47 year wait (and still counting) for a return.

Space it seems, is now pretty boring (we suppose it is mostly empty anyway), only utilised in 2019 to enable aubergine emojis to be sent around the world and to allow drivers to completely ignore road signs.

Hollywood however hasn’t forgotten the romanticism of a proper space adventure, and in 2015 ‘The Martian‘ showed us via incredible attention to detail how a manned mission to Mars might look. It even had it’s own star car, the funky and yet very probable-looking Mars Rover.

This is that vehicle, albeit in Technic form, as built by Samolot of Eurobricks. Underneath the movie-realistic exterior Samolot had included an array of clever remote control functionality, all of it powered by LEGO’s own Power Functions motors and controlled via the third-party SBrick bluetooth brick and mobile app.

Each of the rover’s four enormous wheels is powered independently by a separate L Motor which – due to their size – are ingeniously housed inside the wheels themselves. All four wheels steer too, courtesy of a Medium Motor, whilst independent suspension allows the model to traverse the rocky martian landscape.

Finally two more Medium motors power the rover’s winch and rear crane (switchable via a gearbox) and an on-board compressor that feeds air to the crane’s pneumatic cylinders and those that open the cockpit doors.

Samolot’s creation is superbly accurate to the ‘real’ vehicle that starred in the movie and there’s loads more to see at the Eurobricks discussion forum via the link above, including a video of the model in action. Click the link above to make the trip, and remember that help is only 140 million miles away…