SpaceX’s Starship V3 has triggered a paradigm shift in space robotics design. The significant reduction in launch costs (below $100 per kilogram to Low Earth Orbit, down from $2,500/kg for Falcon 9 in 2020) has removed a major design constraint. Developers are now adopting «industrial-grade» standards — prioritizing mechanical redundancy, modularity, and maintainability over obsessive mass reduction. This allows for larger robotic arms and enables batch launches and in-orbit assembly: robots can be launched as modular components and assembled in space, eliminating the need for factory-complete designs. Additionally, advances in embodied AI (specifically Vision-Language-Action models) allow operators to issue high-level commands (e.g., «transfer sample container A3 to the sealed chamber»), and the robot autonomously handles visual recognition, path planning, and obstacle avoidance — transforming robots from remote-controlled puppets into autonomous agents.
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