Astrolab tested a prototype of its FLEX rover it says could be ready to support the first Artemis lunar landing missions. Credit: Astrolab |
The company, Venturi Astrolab, released photos and video
showing its Flexible Logistics and Exploration (FLEX) vehicle riding over the
rugged California desert near Death Valley National Park during a five-day
field test in December.
Astrolab executives say the four-wheeled, car-sized FLEX
rover is designed for use in NASA's Artemis program, aimed at returning humans
to the moon as early as 2025 and establishing a long-term lunar colony as a
precursor to sending astronauts to Mars.
Unlike the Apollo-era moon buggies of the 1970s or the
current generation of robotic Mars rovers tailored for specialised tasks and
experiments, FLEX is designed as an all-purpose vehicle that can be driven by
astronauts or operated by remote control.
Built around a modular payload system inspired by
conventional containerised shipping, FLEX is versatile enough to be used for
exploration, cargo delivery, site construction and other logistical work on the
moon, the company says.
"For humanity to truly live and operate in a sustained
way off Earth, there needs to exist an efficient and economical network all the
way from the launch pad to the ultimate outpost," Astrolab founder and CEO
Jaret Matthews said in a statement announcing the rover's development.
If NASA adopts FLEX and its modular payload platform for
Artemis, it would become the first passenger-capable rover to ply the lunar
surface since Apollo 17, the last of six original US manned missions to the moon,
in December 1972.
Apollo 17's lunar roving vehicle set a moon speed record of
11 miles per hour (17.7 km/h). FLEX can move just as swiftly.
Apollo's astronauts found "they spent just as much time
off the ground as on it at that speed, so it's kind of a practical limit for the
moon," where gravity is one-sixth that of Earth, Matthews, a former rover
engineer for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Reuters in an interview on
Wednesday.
While Apollo LRVs carried up to two astronauts seated at its
controls like a car, FLEX passengers - as many as two at a time - ride standing
in the back, driving the vehicle with a joystick either astronaut can maneuver.
The rover itself, with the approximate wheelbase of a Jeep,
weighs just over 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) but has a cargo capacity of 3,300
pounds, about the same as a light-duty pickup truck.
With its solar-powered battery fully charged, the vehicle
can run for eight hours with astronauts aboard and has sufficient energy
capacity to survive the extreme cold of a lunar night, up to 300 hours in total
darkness, at the moon's south pole, Matthews said.
During the FLEX field test at the Dumont Dunes Off-Highway
Recreation Area north of Baker, California, adjacent to Death Valley, the rover
was piloted by retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who is an Astrolab
advisory board member, and MIT aerospace graduate student Michelle Lin.
Video showed the pair dressed in mock spacesuits riding on
the vehicle over a sand dune and using it to transport and set up a large,
vertical solar array. "It was huge fun to drive the FLEX," Hadfield
said in the video. © Reuters
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