An extraterrestrial remote control system helped an astronaut aboard the International Space Station to control the moves of a robot at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley on Friday.

Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano conducted the test by using the rover to deploy a simulate radio telescope antenna on the Ames Roverscape. It is a sandy and rocky simulation of the lunar landscape and is nearly the size of a football field.

The rover was controlled by him with the help of a Java application. The application was running on a Lenovo ThinkPad on the ISS.

The rover is a four-wheeled robot and called as K10. A team of NASA scientists was keeping a watch on the test at Ames, but Parmitano controlled it all the time.

Terry Fong, telerobotics program manager at NASA Ames said that the main goal is to figure out ways that can have both humans and robots work really well together.

He added, "And not just any kind of robot, we're really interested in remotely operated robots. In particular, we're looking at how we can use these robots to improve the way humans can live and work in space".

NASA is aiming to develop robots that can effectively be controlled by astronauts during planetary and lunar exploration.