![]() It would support a bevy of one- and two-week missions, and it could even explore the surface of the moon autonomously between human visitations. The crewed lunar terrain vehicle should be designed to last at least a decade, according to NASA’s requirements. The agency is also considering a third vehicle-a pressurized “ habitable mobility platform” that could transport crews for up to 45 days. The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, (VIPER), another lunar rover, will not chauffeur people but instead will roam uncrewed around the moon’s south pole for 100 days in search of water ice. ![]() Importantly, the lunar terrain vehicle is just one member of the automotive fleet that will support Artemis’s astronauts. “This isn’t your grandfather’s moonbuggy,” read bold text in black and pink while an electric guitar vamped in the video, “but it might be his granddaughter’s”-an allusion to Artemis III’s goal of putting the first woman on the moon. Last August NASA said as much in a video announcing a request for information for a new lunar terrain vehicle. For those sorts of high-endurance operations, a suitably high-endurance vehicle would be desirable, too. NASA’s plans call for Artemis’s first moonwalking astronauts to spend a week exploring the region around their landing site, which is intended to become a sort of base camp for future lunar forays. But this time an Apollo-like moon buggy will not suffice. These vehicles were considered disposable: each ran only for a matter of hours before being discarded on the moon at mission’s end.įast-forward to today, when NASA is once again aiming for astronauts on the moon: the space agency’s Artemis III mission is slated to ferry a crew to the vicinity of the lunar south pole as soon as 2025. ![]() During those missions, the vehicles traversed an average of just over 30 total kilometers of lunar terrain and reached a top speed of 18 kilometers per hour. Astronaut David Scott, who was the first person to drive one on the moon during the Apollo 15 mission, remarked that the “moon buggy” vehicles were “about as optimum as you can build.” Astronauts used them in Apollo 16 and 17, too. Presaging today’s eco-conscious market for carbon-neutral transportation, Apollo’s battery-powered lunar roving vehicles were all-electric as well. Of the many “firsts” from NASA’s Apollo program of lunar exploration, one often overlooked is that the Apollo missions included the first-and so far only-times that humans have driven on another world. ![]()
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