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Before returning humans to the lunar surface in 2024 as part of the Artemis program, NASA plans to send several robotic missions to the natural satellite. One of them is Astrobotic’s CubeRover, which is heading to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, after three years of intense engineering work.
The rover was developed in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, with input from a NASA team at Kennedy. According to Astrobotic, their joint development is the smallest and lightest commercial planetary rover ever created. The CubeRover is designed to provide an affordable mobile platform for scientific instruments and other payloads on the Moon’s surface. It is about the size of a shoe box, according to a NASA statement, weighs about four kilograms and travels on four wheels.
“Because our CubeRover is so light, in the four kilogram range, it dramatically reduces the cost of flight, making the Moon more accessible to more customers.”Says Michael Provenzano, Director of Planetary Mobility at Astrobotic. “We are also including industry standard interfaces across mobile to simplify the payload integration process.. “
NASA teams at the Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations Laboratory (GMRO) will spend months testing CubeRover on the simulated lunar surface. As part of upcoming tests, NASA engineers will conduct a battery of mobility tests on the CubeRover in terrain that closely mimics the mechanical properties of the lunar surface that will measure slopes, gaps, and other surface irregularities. that the rover can navigate. The drop tests will ensure that the rover is not at risk of capsizing during its deployment from a lander to the lunar surface.
NASA said it chose Astrobotic as a business partner for a future mission to search for concentrations of ice on the lunar surface. This information will be very useful for manned missions after landing on the Moon. The CubeRover vehicle is designed to work with a variety of landings on the lunar surface and can also be used in many other space missions.
