Moon cars for Artemis: NASA video shows progress on rovers and Lunar Terrain Vehicles
NASA has released a video update on its lunar vehicles: the VIPER rover is set to launch in 2027, and the crewed vehicles from Astrolab and Lunar Outpost are to reach the Moon by 2028.
Photo: NASA Johnson Space Center / NASA/Robert Markowitz / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain (cropped and resized)
Video: YouTube · NASA · youtube.com
NASA presented the status of its lunar vehicles on 20 October in a roughly nine-minute video on its official YouTube channel. The focus is on the robotic rover VIPER and the Lunar Terrain Vehicles (LTV) that Artemis astronauts are to drive at the lunar south pole. "Lunar rovers are central to our surface mobility strategy," says Robert Pickle, director of the Surface Mobility Office in the Moon Base programme.
According to NASA, VIPER is fully built and in final testing at Johnson Space Center. The rover is to reach the south pole in 2027 aboard Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, drive into permanently shadowed craters and search for water, covering more than 30 kilometres. Astrolab and Lunar Outpost have received task orders for the LTV, and Blue Origin is to deliver the vehicles to the Moon by 2028. Driven remotely, they are to cover up to six kilometres a day; with a crew, up to ten kilometres per battery charge while carrying up to 80 kilograms of samples and tools.
Wheel tests come next: the flexible airless wheels of Astrolab's CLV-1 and the spring-mesh tyres of Lunar Outpost's Pegasus are to be tested at Glenn Research Center in the coming weeks. NASA says both companies are to deliver flight-ready hardware at the end of 2027.