California incipiency Astrolab Unveils Space Rover, Pitch for NASA's Artemis Moon Mission.

California incipiency Astrolab Unveils Space Rover, Pitch for NASA's Artemis Moon Mission.

A Los Angeles- area incipiency innovated by a stager spaceflight robotics mastermind unveiled on Thursday its full-scale, working prototype for a coming- generation lunar rover that's just as presto as NASA's old "moon perambulator" but is designed to do much further.

The company, Venturi Astrolab, released prints and videotape 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 directors say the four- wheeled, auto-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 transferring astronauts to Mars.

Unlike the Apollo-era moon rovers of the 1970s or the current generation of robotic Mars rovers adapted for specific missions and experiments, the FLEX is designed as a general-purpose vehicle that can be piloted by astronauts or remotely operated.

Built around a modular freight system inspired by traditional container shipping, FLEX is versatile enough to be used for inquiries, weight transfers, point construction and other logistics on the moon, the company said.

"For humanity to truly live and operate in a sustained way off Earth, there needs to live an effective and provident network all the way from the launch pad to the ultimate village,"Astrolab author and CEO Jaret Matthews said in a statement publicizing the rover's development.

Still, it would come the first passenger-able rover to ply the lunar face since Apollo 17, the last of six original US manned operations to the moon, If NASA adopts FLEX and its modular cargo platform for Artemis.

Apollo 17's lunar ranging vehicle set a moon speed record of 11 country miles per hour (17.7 km/ h). FLEX can move just as fleetly.

Apollo's astronauts plant" they spent just as important time off the ground as on it at that speed, so it's kind of a practical limit for the moon, "where graveness is one-sixth that of Earth, Matthews, a former rover mastermind for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

While the Apollo LRV can carry up to two astronauts, sitting on their controls like a car, the FLEX passengers - up to two at a time - can lift while in reverse and steer the vehicle with joysticks that each astronaut can manipulate .

The rover itself has about the same wheelbase as a Jeep and weighs just over 500kg, but has a load capacity of 100kg, about the same as a light truck.

With its fully charged solar cells, the vehicle can operate with astronauts on board for eight hours and has enough energy to survive the extreme frosts of a moonlit night, and in the total darkness of the moon's south pole, Matthews said. Up to 300 hours. it.

During the FLEX field test at the Dumont Stacks Off- Trace Recreation Area north of Baker, California, conterminous to Death Valley, the rover was piloted by retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who's an Astrolab premonitory board member, and MIT aerospace graduate pupil Michelle Lin.

Videotape showed the brace dressed in mock spacesuits riding on the vehicle over a beach drift and using it to transport and set up a large, perpendicular solar array. "It was huge fun to drive the FLEX," Hadfield said in the videotape.