A dazzling array of cutting-edge aviation and aerospace innovations is on full display at the 55th Paris Air Show, drawing thousands to Le Bourget Airport near Paris, with a European lunar rover unveiled for space agencies.
From next-gen aircraft to futuristic space exploration tech, the biennial event offers a glimpse into the future of travel -- both on the Earth and in space.
Among the standout unveilings is the Mona Luna, the fully European lunar rover developed by Venturi Space France.
Venturi Space France, based in Toulouse, is firmly committed to the European Space Agency (ESA)'s goal to send the continent's first astronauts to the Moon's surface by 2030.
The 100 percent European-designed Mona Luna Rover showcased at the Paris Air Show represents a bold fusion of functionality and fashion.
"My mission here is to do exactly what I'm doing in other fields, is to listen to the engineers, to understand them and try to figure out how I can make all those constraints and all those technical details beautiful," said Sacha Lakic, product designer of Venturi Lab.
The rover is specifically designed to meet the needs of the ESA and the French National Center for Space Studies.
The Mona Luna weighs in at 750 kilograms. It is equipped with an electric propulsion system, solar panels and three high-performance batteries. It is also engineered to withstand several lunar nights, which is one of the biggest challenges for moon exploration. Temperatures near the Moon's equator gets as hot as 121 degrees Celsius during the day before plummeting to minus 133 degrees in the darkness.
Another part of the Mona Luna's design is focused on mobility, which can be a matter of life or death for astronauts navigating unpredictable terrain.
"You see the big wheels behind me? You have a very good traction on loose soil. You can have floatation. It means that you do not remain stuck on the lunar soils. So, extended mobility is also one of the main features of this robot," said Antonio Delfino, director and co-founder of Venturi Lab.
Companies like Venturi are accelerating the pace in developing these cutting-edge products as the global commercial space race continues to boom.
"Those [are] products that are imagined here on the Earth and then one day they will be on Mars, on the Moon. This is 'wow!' It's kind of a dream that is coming true," said Lakic.
Inaugurated in 1909, the biennial Paris Air Show is the world's largest in the aerospace sector, embodying excellence, innovation, and international cooperation in the industry. This year's event runs from June 16 to 22.
European company unveils lunar rover for space agencies at Paris Air Show
Honor's humanoid robot, Lightning, which swept the 2026 Beijing E-Town Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon on Sunday, is a natural extension of years of accumulation in consumer electronics technology, said its developers.
A leading smart device provider in China, Honor independently developed the model, which dominated the podium at the event as it was used by all three teams whose autonomous navigating robots ran the fastest times.
At the Honor factory in Pingshan District in Shenzhen City, south China's Guangdong Province, where robotics engineers developed Lightning. They said the robot's body design incorporates a simulation system that, through artificial intelligence algorithms, can iterate nearly 30,000 design schemes of varying sizes over three months. Complete and mature systems are also in place for battery, communication, and reliability verification.
"We built a simulation lab from scratch. For the robots, we digitize the entire design and put it into a computer. We have our own material library, which can meet the force, thermal, and chemical property demands for each component, under different environments and speeds. We've accumulated about 1000 kinds of materials. For example, if there's a risk with the robot's neck, we just need to change the material code from 001 to 002. Now, through our simulations, we only need one day to perform parallel calculations on 10 different designs, before creating a mold and verifying it in the lab," said Li Zheng, a senior engineer at Honor.
An autonomous robot capable of completing a half-marathon involves a complete industry chain, with core components including high-precision sensors, LiDAR, motors, operating systems, and control algorithms. The development of robotic marathoners have driven an increasing number of component enterprises to get involved.
Manifold, a tech firm established by newly-graduated PhDs, has developed a 3D spatial memory module, which can model an environment in real time and transform it into images that robots can understand. They said several robots running the half-marathon this year adopted their solution.
"Our device can operate within a one-kilometer tunnel with an error margin of only tens of centimeters. For robots, especially in the absence of GPS, this allows them to accurately determine their location. The underlying technology is a multi-sensor fusion technology that we developed in-house," said Qin Youming, CEO and founder of Manifold.
The Beijing Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center set up a training camp for the marathon event. Many university students came a month ahead of the event to develop and debug their technologies and algorithms based on open-source robot bodies, databases, and training platforms.
"These high-quality databases and highly open-source control algorithms are actually very helpful to us. We no longer need to build the house from the ground up, but can skip the most basic part," said Sun Jingyu, a student from Shandong University.
"Through this racing event, I believe we can make our robots more reliable and stable, while also supporting high-dynamic, high-load movements. This is crucial for robots' future application in both industrial, commercial and domestic scenarios," said Guo Yijie, head of the innovative humanoid department and the Marathon project of Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center.
Engineers share development story behind Beijing humanoid half-marathon champion model
