General Motors says it aims to help NASA bring electric and autonomous vehicles to the moon this decade to allow Artemis astronauts to zip around the lunar surface.
The legacy car company announced Wednesday that it’s teaming up with longtime NASA contractor Lockheed Martin to develop new moon buggies.
“These next-generation rovers will dramatically extend the range of astronauts as they perform high-priority science investigation on the Moon that will ultimately impact humanity’s understanding of our place in the solar system,” Rick Ambrose, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space, said in a statement.
The rovers “will dramatically extend the range of astronauts as they perform high-priority science investigation on the Moon that will ultimately impact humanity’s understanding of our place in the solar system,” Rick Ambrose, executive vice president of Lockheed’s space unit, said in a statement. NASA’s Artemis program calls for an initial astronaut Moon landing as soon as 2024 with follow-up missions to build a sustained presence on the lunar south pole. Those missions will prove and test technologies that can inform future missions to Mars.
The heavyweight collaboration between Lockheed and GM came after NASA asked the private sector to come up with ideas for two types of human-rated Moon vehicles: the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (or LTV) and a bigger “Lunar Surface Science Mobility System,” essentially a science lab on wheels. NASA had only a few minimum specifications for LTV concepts, including the capability of driving autonomously on the Moon’s hazardous, crater-laden terrain a challenging environment for the computer vision technology that powers autonomous driving systems on Earth.
GM, which is investing $27 billion in its autonomous EV portfolio, plans to put its self-driving technology on the Moon for the first time. “At this point, what we have is a tremendous toolkit, a commercial autonomy baseline that we can work from,” Ryder said. “We’re heads-down right now investigating how we would take those capabilities and apply them to these specific missions and operations associated with the Artemis program.”
No design has been revealed just yet. Jeff Ryder, vice president of growth and strategy for General Motors Defense, told reporters on a Zoom call Wednesday that the companies are waiting on a detailed request for proposals from NASA, expected to drop later this year.
“It’s likely we’ll see more than one vehicle, perhaps.”
The Apollo rovers traveled less than five miles (eight kilometers) on the moon. Any new LTV is going to put in a lot more miles shuttling around the moon’s south pole, which is likely to be darker, colder and more rugged than the sites visited by Apollo astronauts.
Ryder added that the lessons learned in designing vehicles that can handle temperatures swings of hundreds of degrees and cold nights lasting up to 14 days could also be applied to building better electric vehicles and batteries for use on Earth.
