MIT engineers have unveiled a 6-foot, 300-pound robot designed to one day replace NASA astronauts on long and dangerous space missions.According tothe Valkyrie humanoid designed by MIT's Computer Science and AI Lab – introduced last week at the New England Robotics Validation and Experimentation Center – can walk, climb, and navigate a room using 200 sensors, including 38 on each hand, and four body cameras.MIT will keep working on the Valkyrie bot for two years with a research grant from NASA to get ready for its trip to the Red Planet to maintain equipment in anticipation of the arrival of astronauts, the"If you don’t start your car for two years, do you expect it will start when you return?" Taskin Padir, a professor of engineering at Northeastern University who will be leading that university’s work with Valkyrie."Humanoid robots will be part of the pre-deployment mission to Mars and will maintain equipment prior to the astronauts’ arrival."The bot will start work as an assistant to astronauts, but eventually could replace them altogether for more dangerous missions, Tech Insider reports.