Kronosphere

The Kronosphere was a device of Decepticon design which is actually a time machine, though a funny looking one.

It had an automatic recall mechanism allowing it to bring back anything it sent through time.

War Dawn
The time machine was created by Shockwave under the orders of Megatron who planned to use it to travel into Cybertron's past where he would steal energon from earlier periods in Cybertronian history before the outbreak of the Great War when the planet had plenty of energy for everyone.

Since the Aerialbots were making a nuisance of themselves to Decepticon operations on Earth, Megatron decided to dispose of them by sending them so far back in time that nothing existed, not even the galaxy itself. Starscream managed to lead the dumb bots into the machine where they were supposed to be hopelessly lost in time.

Sadly, in our last chance to get rid of Slingshot, the Autobots attacked Megatron's base where Optimus Prime destroyed the Kronosphere controls thus dumping the Aerialbots in Cybertron's Golden Age which was 9 million years ago. Why Prime, why?!

Once that was done, the Autobots attempted to repair the device in order to get the Aerialbot back to the present. While attempting to fix the machine, the Decepticons attempted to get it back as Megatron believed that it would be disastrous if the Autobots made use of the Kronosphere. which they were successful in doing. Good timing too, as the Autobots needed Superion to fight a repaired Guardian robot that the Decepticons had fixed and set loose on the Autobots.

The Kronosphere was subsequently destroyed.

Foreign names

 * Japanese: Time machine, Krono Sphere (クロノ・スフィア Kurono Sufia)