The trip home of the Japanese humanoid robot Kirobo has been delayed due to its cheerless stay at the International Space Station.

Kirobo is designed after Astro Boy and created by Tomotaka Takahashi. It has facial recognition software and language processing technology from Toyota. Its mission is to entertain astronauts in space.

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"Nowadays, more and more people are living alone. It's not just the elderly -- with today's changing lifestyles, its people of all ages. With a new style of robot-human interface, perhaps a way to solve this problem could be found. This is the goal we have in mind for this project," said the Kibo Robot Project website.

Kirobo befriended Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, an ISS commander. In multiple videos on the project website, Wakata can be seen chatting with the robot.

Unfortunately, Wakata had to bid farewell to adorable Kirobo on May 2014 when he returned home.

In the last week of August, Kirobo made a rather melancholic message to his fans in a video entitled "Last message from the universe."

"I'm a little tired, so I think I'll rest a while, but I hope you'll look up at the sky sometimes and think of me," Kirobo said.

The project website confirmed that Kirobo's return to Earth has been postponed. It was originally scheduled for the end of 2014.

It said the Kibo Robot Project is planning to return Kirobo safely to Earth in 2015. They will post the full details at a later date.

When not entertaining the ISS astronauts, the adorable robot took photos and updated its Twitter account.

The project also launched a "Where is Kirobo?" app that allows fans to track the orbit of the ISS to know the exact location of Kirobo in space

TagsISS Kirobo robot, kirobo, ISS, Humanoid, astronauts