NASA wanted a new rover for the moon. And it did; Encounter

As part of its campaign to return astronauts to the Moon, NASA has awarded contracts for new lunar probes, new space suits, and even a space station orbiting the Moon. Then new wheels.

NASA has opened a competition to build a lunar rover that would be a cross between the Apollo-era “moon cart” that astronauts drove on the lunar surface and the remote-controlled robotic rovers that have operated on Mars for years.

Dubbed the “Lunar Terrain Vehicle,” the rover will play a key role in NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to create the infrastructure on and around the lunar surface that allows for a long-term sustainable human presence.

To do so, the space agency is working to develop energy sources on the Moon, as well as technologies that would allow astronauts to “live off the land” by mining lunar resources and even using lunar regolith, or moon dust, to create building blocks. constituents that could be used to create habitats.

Transportation is also a key component. In a statement last week, NASA said it wants vehicles that astronauts “drive to explore and sample more of the lunar surface using LTV than they could on foot.”

As we discovered on Apollo, one to two kilometers is as far as you would like to walk in a suit on the lunar surface. Then you need something else. You need to extend that reach, for both transportation and science.

Steve Munday, NASA LTV program manager, in an interview

But since astronauts would only be on the surface for up to 30 days at a time, the rover would need to be usable without astronauts on board. In between manned missions, the LTVs would be used to “carry scientific payloads and payloads between manned landing sites, enabling further science returns, resource prospecting, and lunar exploration,” the agency said in a statement.

For several missions, NASA will pay to use the rover for its purposes. “But then, in the other months of the year, it will be up to the supplier to commercialize it,” Munday said. “So we’re not just leveraging commercial innovation, we’re helping to fuel this nascent lunar economy.”

One of the companies aiming to be first in the LTV competition is a start-up called Venturi Astrolab, founded by Jaret Matthews, a former SpaceX and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer.

Earlier this year, the company announced that it has signed a contract with SpaceX for the delivery of its ground vehicle, the Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover, or FLEX. Scheduled for mid-2026, the mission would be the first commercial foray by SpaceX’s Starship rocket, which NASA also plans to use to carry its astronauts to and from the lunar surface for the first two Artemis landings.

The rover is designed to be flexible. Its modular design will allow it to swap payloads and perform different missions over time, Matthews said. Venturi Astrolab said it has signed deals for commercial payloads but did not provide details about it.

“Ultimately it’s about allowing for a sustained human presence and all that that entails,” Matthews said in an interview. “Just as the International Space Station receives a steady stream of consumables, the same will likely happen in the first few decades of operations on the Moon. And that’s where we’ll meet: at the service of that market”.

Other bidders include some of the biggest names in aerospace partnerships with automakers including Lockheed Martin and General Motors, a partnership the companies say would bring an amazing experience given the harsh environment on the Moon. For the Artemis missions, NASA wants to explore the south pole of the moon, where there is water in the form of ice. But there are also very cold nights that can last 14 days at a time.

“Today, what we’re asking for is something highly capable,” said Kirk Shireman, vice president of Lockheed Martin’s Lunar Exploration Campaign. “It will be autonomous. One of the great things is that it can survive the lunar night, which is long and very, very cold. And electronics don’t like it very, very cold.

Defense contractor Leidos is partnering with NASCAR. Sierra Space is partnering with Teledyne Brown Engineering and Nissan. Northrop Grumman, meanwhile, is in talks to partner with Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based company that is also building a lunar module.

“These types of non-traditional partnerships [são] very encouraging for the kind of innovation and variety of designs we can get for this proposal,” said Munday. The award of the contract is scheduled for November.

With information from The Washington Post

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