By Duncan Geere, Jun. 5, 2015, Tech Radar

An astronaut on the International Space Station has successfully controlled an object on Earth from orbit, enabling the possibility of driving remote-control cars across alien worlds.

The symbolic 'handshake' was performed between astronaut Terry Virts on the ISS and teleroboticist Andre Schiele, 5,000 kilometres away in the Netherlands. Virts moved a joystick in space, and the joystick on Earth replicated those movements exactly with a lag-time of just 0.8 seconds.

"The system worked even though the Space Station was flying over 5000 km away," said André. "It felt as though Terry was extending his arm down from space to shake my hand."