NASA’s rugged lunar rover could

BY MARIA SONNENBERG

A very special vehicle that can climb rocks, spin on a dime and go sideways might make an appearance on the Space Coast in the not too distant future.

Don’t get too excited, however, because this wonder machine won’t be available at a car dealership. We’re talking about the pressurized lunar rover destined to help astronauts maneuver the bumpy lunar surface when Artemis launches — hopefully — in 2025. The nimble rover is currently near Flagstaff, Arizona for tests around SP Crater, considered the earth terrain most similar to the Moon’s.

“This is the best simulation they can achieve without the lunar dust issues, 1/6 gravity and vacuum conditions,” said John Tribe, the chief engineer of launch support services during the Space Shuttle program.

Tribe still remembers driving home from work in the 1960s and seeing astronauts bouncing over rocks aboard a rover trying to negotiate the “lunar landscape” behind Kennedy Space Center’s Flight Crew Training Building.

“The Arizona testing seems more thorough than those early days,” he said.

According to NASA, the rover is being tested for “design, cabin configuration, driving modes, timeline constraints and mission operations to support potential design concepts for future pressurized rovers.”

The rover is part of D-RATS, or Desert Research and Technology Studies, which have been ongoing for a decade and included three special missions in October of last year when teams of two astronauts trained aboard. In this exhaustive simulation, the astronauts operated the vehicle, lived in it for two days and conducted simulated moonwalks over Black Point Lava Flow near SP Crater while in conversation with Mission Control in Houston, just as they would have done had they been on the Moon.

This lunar RV will permit astronauts to comfortably live and work inside it for weeks at a time. The vehicle boasts all the air, water, food and tools the astronauts need, while also allowing them easy exit for sample collection or for performing experiments.

Mark Marquette, the community liaison for the American Space Museum and Space Walk of Fame, is a fan of all things space. While he applauds the development of the new, improved rover, he warns the astronauts to watch for a little bit of a traffic jam up on the Moon.

“The Chinese, who have a very ambitious space program, already have rovers on the Moon, so when we get ours up there, we won’t be the only ones,” he said. SL