While tech companies like Facebook and Google are planning to deliver wireless data via hot air balloons or drones and fighting over which face-strapped monitors will be the future of the internet, the European Space Agency is busy at work on some serious, short-term high tech: our next mission to mars. But the way it's doing it looks fun.

The European Space Agency's ExoMars program unveiled its new rover prototype at the sandbox-ish playground, officially called the "Mars Yard Test Arena" in Stevenage, England on Thursday. The testing ground replicates the surface of Mars in order to put prototype rovers up against the various challenges it will face millions of miles away: like landing and drilling beneath the surface to search for signs of life.

The prototype rover, called "Bryan" by its handlers, is the next step towards the final goal of launching an autonomous robotic rover in 2018 as part of the ExoMars program, which will eventually bring actual samples of Mars' terrain back to Earth for close scrutiny by the next decade, with the help of a Mars orbiter planned to launch in 2016.

Like NASA's Mars Curiosity rover, Bryan or whatever its final name/post-prototype incarnation will be, will also have an onboard laboratory to look at samples and feed the information back to Earth, which could contain proof of living organisms on Mars as well as any number of unanticipated discoveries.

The rover will be capable of drilling down six feet beneath the surface, beneath levels affected by radiation and likely where water deposits are going to be found "If there was life, that's where we would expect to find it," said Abbie Hutty, the engineer who is helping to make the rover capable of withstanding the harsh Martian atmosphere.

Also like NASA's Curiosity rover, the rover for ExoMars has to navigate autonomously, due to logistical difficulties inherent in the distance between Earth and Mars. The rover can't be handled in real time, because it takes 10 minutes for light to cross between the two planets, so the ExoMars rover will have to suffice for itself on the details of getting from point A to point B. Twice a day, ExoMars will be fed instructions on what destination to go towards, and its onboard cameras and software will have to find the best route, avoiding hazards that could strand the rover on the desolate surface of Mars forever.

That's another reason why engineers for the European Space Agency are playing in a giant sandbox in England -- to develop the software necessary to make the ExoMars rover smart enough to survive on its own. "We need to verify the performance, to check that the algorithms and the processes that we're using will actually work -- will be fit for purpose to deal with the conditions and obstacles we expect to find on Mars," said Dr Ralph Cordey from Airbus Defense and Space, the company charged to assemble the rover, to BBC News.

Come 2018, don't expect the European mission control room to be erupting in chants of "Bryan!" The rover on display will not be the actual one used in the ExoMars mission. That will have to be built in clean rooms to avoid any sensors being contaminated from bits of Earth -- or bits of the Mars playground in England.