Travelling to the moon is generally only an opportunity made available exclusively to trained spacemen. Still, hearing something familiar being able to pay a visit does make it sound like one step closer for us.

Audi has partnered with German space travel team Part-Time Scientists for the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition since 2015, with the goal of sending the co-developed rover to the moon and completing a set of required tasks. The team just announced that the Audi Lunar Quattro rover has been fully developed and that they plan to set off in late 2017 with a launcher booked with Spaceflight Inc.

16 Audi experts have been providing support in technical areas such as the rover’s intelligent all-wheel drive power distribution, high-performance electronics optimisation and piloted driving. They also managed to shave off its weight from 38 to 30 kg by using a mix of lightweight materials and aluminium 3D printing.

Two units will touch the lunar ground close to the Apollo 17 landing point with ALINA, the landing module of the Part-Time Scientists. Each Lunar Quattro will have four cameras for guiding its way around, examining objects and taking 3D and 360-degree pictures. They will first spend the next few months in the Middle East for final testing and fine-tune. The entire mission will be simulated to make sure the rovers behave as expected in extreme conditions. NASA, the Europe Space Agency and Wikipedia are some of the other partners that Part-Time Scientists will take research equipment to the moon for during the same mission.