NASA Wants Your Moon Rover Ideas
NASA to Industry: Send Ideas for Lunar Rovers
“As NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program mounts toward a robust decade of modern science, research, and human exploration at the Moon, the agency is asking American companies to think about how to get around on the lunar surface. NASA issued two separate Requests for Information (RFI) seeking industry approaches for development of robotic mobility systems and human-class lunar rovers. With these RFIs, NASA seeks to foster an emerging American market of lunar transportation capability by engaging the terrestrial vehicle and robotic communities.”
If we’re talking about the ideal astronaut-carrying rover, you’d want
1. Pressurized with airlock for EVA
2. Capable of being assembled on the lunar surface from smaller landings (IE you don’t have to land the whole thing in a single giant lander).
3. Some type of robot arm for grabbing smaller samples off the lunar surface, so you don’t have to suit up for an EVA every time you want to collect samples on a drive.
4. Some small remotely controlled vehicle
5. An optionally piloted rover (to take stuff back along the outbound track).
Very fond of the idea built into one of the existing rover prototypes: Suit-dock on the back of the rover cabin so that you leave your dirty space suit on the outside and only loose a tiny amount of atmosphere between the rover inner hatch and the back hatch of the space suit when you un-dock and go walking off (not to mention being able to get into the suit and leave the back hatch open and keep using the rover’s life support if you just need to have a quick look).
I do like the idea of having the space suits “dock” onto the rover, the same concept as is now used for visiting spacecraft to the ISS. This eliminates the need for an airlock, and eliminates the need to reduce or completely get rid of harmful moon dust in the rover’s internal atmosphere. It does make the system more complex due to needing spacesuits or interfaces that are capable of a proper seal.
Have two groups for lunar rovers. One is a science group, the other is commercial/resource utilization group. Give each reasonable funding and leeway to do what they feel is best for the mission and objectives. And never use Mars in the same sentence.
and never use Mars in the same sentence. =)
Thank you very much.
I just took a look at the RFIs and the human-carrying vehicle they want isn’t what the comments here describe. The biggest difference is that they do _not_ want to hear about pressurized rovers. They mention a future need for a “habitable mobile platform”, but this RFI is limited to an unpressurized vehicle for astronauts in EVA suits.
In addition, they want a 500 kg vehicle (for a single launch and landing with a CLPS lander) able to carry 500 kg (est. mass of two astronauts in EVA suits.) The range must be at least 2 km (underwhelming, but the surrounding text says they don’t expect astronauts to walk more than 1-2 km, so the requirement is “more than that.”) The power supply should be rechargeable (I assume they are assuming electric.) Able to be survive conditions at the lunar south pole at night. At least as capable of handling rough terrain as the Apollo rovers. And the ability to drive around autonomously or teleoperated is desirable.
Even if they don’t have a pressurized rover: I think the ability to plug their suits into a Rover oxygen supply that preserves their suit supplies might be a good idea..
I know that back in the 1950’s the idea was broached, of a one manned shirt-sleeve-environment pressurized-pod as a substitute for a conventional EVA suit. This was represented most popularly as the “pods” in the movie “2001: a space odyssey”, with small thrusters for propulsion and waldoes for manipulating objects.
Has a similar concept ever been considered for a lunar surface rover? A tiny one-man lunar rover, designed for a single astronaut perhaps wearing a flight suit for extra security, might be an ideal compromise between a rover and a conventional EVA suit.
Inspiration might be taken from some of the fully tracked ATV ‘wheelchairs’ which have been fabricated for use by disabled hunters and outdoorsmen.