NASA taps 2 companies to develop buggies for its moon base program

1 hour ago 6

Hawthorne, California — It was 1971 erstwhile America's emotion matter with the car went lunar. The Apollo Lunar Rover turned American moon-walkers into moon-drivers, allowing astronauts to research much than 50 miles of lunar crust and craters.

"The Apollo Lunar Rover was a phenomenal machine, but fundamentally it had a precise antithetic occupation to bash than the 1 we're doing," Jaret Matthews, CEO and laminitis of Astrolab, told CBS News.

On a backmost thoroughfare successful Hawthorne, California, Matthews took CBS News for a rotation successful a Zamboni-looking prototype of his company's 21st-century lunar rover, which it calls FLEX.

The last plan for NASA volition look similar a four-wheel thrust electrical conveyance that tin either rove connected its ain oregon transportation 2 astronauts and supplies.

It volition beryllium designed to run for a year, traversing hundreds of miles crossed the lunar terrain.

"The lunar terrain vehicles person to beryllium a mash-up of the Apollo Lunar Rover to transportation 2 suited astronauts, arsenic good arsenic thing much modern similar the Perseverance Rover connected Mars, and tin beryllium operated remotely from Earth," Matthews said.

Astrolab is 1 of 2 companies NASA picked to physique the archetypal satellite buggies for the satellite base it plans to spend the adjacent 7 years processing adjacent the lunar southbound pole. NASA besides tapped Colorado-based Lunar Outpost to physique a satellite buggy called Pegasus.

NASA is paying Astrolab and Lunar Outpost astir $220 cardinal each for the project.

NASA announced its $20 cardinal plans for the satellite basal connected Tuesday. Two days later, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin New Glenn Rocket exploded during a trial astatine Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The New Glenn Rocket plays a large relation successful NASA's Artemis satellite program, and Blue Origin is processing a lunar lander that volition present each rover to the lunar surface. It's unclear however big a setback the detonation volition beryllium to beryllium to NASA's satellite basal plans.

Meanwhile, Lunar Outpost CEO Justin Cyrus told CBS News helium sees an accidental connected the satellite that goes beyond NASA.

"NASA wants to beryllium 1 of galore customers," Cyrus said. "NASA doesn't privation to beryllium the lone customer. And the lone mode you tin bash that is creating a conveyance that is genuinely susceptible capable to let for caller activities connected the lunar surface."

In: