Organic, inorganic or hybrid devices in the liquid state, kept in a fixed volume by surface tension or by a confining membrane that protects them from a harsh environment, could be used as biologically inspired autonomous robotic systems with unique capabilities. They could change shape according to a specific exogenous command or by means of a fully integrated adaptive system, and provide an innovative solution for many future applications, such as space exploration in extreme or otherwise challenging environments, post‐disaster search and rescue in ground applications, compliant wearable devices, and even in the medical field for in vivo applications. This perspective provides an initial assessment of existing capabilities that could be leveraged to pursue the topic of “Smart Fluid Systems” or “Liquid Engineered Systems”.

The innovations in high-performance, low-power electronics and low-cost space access are unlocking affordable distributed radar systems and new remote sensing opportunities. The Distributed Element Beamformer Radar for Ice and Subsurface sounding (DEBRIS) is a concept to implement a 2D sparse radar aperture to improve the radar's spatial resolution and sounding investigation depth through the reduction of surface clutter. Here, we introduce this system and highlight its applications, orbital configurations, and the implementation considerations to achieve state-of-the-art performance for spaceborne radar sounders.

Mechatronics systems, a macroscopic domain, aim at producing highly efficient engineering platforms, with applications in a variety of industries and situations. On the other hand, quantum technologies, a microscopic domain, are emerging as a promising avenue to speed up computations and perform more efficient sensing. Recently, these two fields have started to merge in a novel area: quantum mechatronics. In this review article, we describe some developments produced so far in this respect, including early steps into quantum robotics, macroscopic actuators via quantum effects, as well as educational initiatives in quantum mechatronics.

A radio telescope on the far-side of the Moon has tremendous advantages compared to Earth-based telescopes because it could observe the universe at wavelengths that are hitherto poorly explored by humans so far and the Moon acts as a physical shield that isolates the telescope from the radio interference and noises from Earth. This paper presents a novel concept for building a radio telescope on the far-side of the Moon. The main idea is to shape a suitable existing lunar crater (1 - 50km in diameter) on the far-side of the Moon into a spherical reflecting dish. The proposed Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) would be able to observe the universe in the 5-100m wavelength band (i.e., 3 - 60MHz radio frequency band). The key innovations of this concept are: (1) LCRT will be the largest filled-aperture radio telescope in the Solar System. (2) LCRT could potentially make tremendous scientific discoveries in fields of cosmology and extrasolar planets by observing the universe in the 5 - 100m λ band (i.e., 3 - 60MHz ν band) that has been hitherto poorly explored. (3) It would require only a few robots from Earth and autonomously modify an existing lunar crater to build the LCRT; thereby significantly reducing launch weight and cost compared to all previous lunar-surface telescope mission concepts. (4) Furthermore, the Earth-based robots are not consumed during construction of LCRT. Therefore, they could create a network of LCRTs to (i) observe different regions of the universe, and (ii) enable lunar Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) astronomy. We envisage that this concept would unlock the potential for ground-breaking scientific discoveries in radio astronomy.