Starship will carry jeep-sized rover to the Moon – 4/6/2023 – Science

A rover the size of a Jeep Wrangler goes to the Moon. And you’ll need an even bigger vehicle to get you there.

Astrolab Inc., the small startup that is building the rover, chose the largest possible vehicle to take it to the Moon: Starship, the gigantic new spacecraft being developed by SpaceX, the rocket company owned by Elon Musk.

Astrolab announced on Friday (31) that it has reached an agreement with SpaceX for its Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover, or Flex, to be carried on a Starship cargo mission that will take off without a crew possibly as early as mid-2026.

“This is the first commercial payload contract for the lunar surface,” said Jaret Matthews, Founder and CEO of Astrolab.

SpaceX, which did not respond to requests for comment, has yet to announce that it is planning this commercial Starship mission to the surface of the Moon, bound for the south polar region. According to Matthews, Astrolab will be just one of the customers sharing Starship’s bulky payload on the mission.

An engineer who previously worked for SpaceX and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Matthews founded Astrolab less than four years ago. Located just a short drive from SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., the company has 20 professionals who work for it full-time, he said.

While the Soviet Union in the 1970s and China more recently sent robotic rovers to the Moon, the United States has yet to do so. (But NASA sent a vehicle to the Moon — the “lunar buggy” driven by astronauts on the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions.)

In 2024, NASA will send its Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or Viper, to search for water ice in the south polar region of the Moon. This is the area that astronauts will explore in the coming years under NASA’s Artemis program.

Unlike that, the trip to the Moon planned by Astrolab is, at least so far, an exclusively commercial mission, which does not have funds from NASA.

Matthews declined to say how much it will cost to send Flex to the moon or how much money Astrolab has raised. He said Astrolab will make money by taking payloads to the lunar surface for customers. These payloads may include scientific instruments. In the future, it is possible that the rover will help build lunar infrastructure.

“Essentially, it will provide what I like to describe as last mile mobility on the Moon,” said Matthews. “Like a UPS on the Moon. In this analogy, Starship is the ship that crosses the sea loaded with containers, and we are the local distribution solution.”

A robotic arm on the rover can help get the payload to the surface. The rover with all its cargo will weigh more than two metric tons. The Flex rover is slightly larger than NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars and much faster, with a top speed of 24 km/h.

Matthews said that Astrolab already has several agreements in place for cargo transportation.

This appears to be part of Starship’s growing potential market. SpaceX intends to use the spacecraft to launch its second generation of Starlink communications satellites. Two flights slated to fly past the moon (but not land) have already been chartered by space tourists. Musk’s long-term dream is to have a fleet of Starships to take colonists to Mars.

For NASA, Starship is what its astronauts will use to land on the Moon in the Artemis 3 mission, currently scheduled for 2025. Before that, SpaceX must perform an unmanned flight to demonstrate the spacecraft’s ability to reach the Moon and land no mishaps.

If schedules are maintained, the commercial cargo mission carrying Astrolab’s rover could depart next year.

Astrolab hopes a later Flex rover could land it future commercial contracts with NASA, which is turning to commercial companies to equip itself with vehicles for moving astronauts on the lunar surface — essentially a 21st-century version of the missions moon buggy. Apollo. Much larger companies such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin are also expected to compete for the contract.

Chris Hadfield, a retired Canadian astronaut who advises Astrolab, helped with some field testing of a prototype passenger Flex rover built in the Death Valley region of California. “So it’s not just a really cool concept. The rover is already a heavily tested vehicle,” he said.

The company has even grander visions for the more distant future. “Ultimately our goal is to have a fleet of rovers on the Moon and on Mars,” said Matthews. “And I think I really see these vehicles as the catalysts for the extraterrestrial economy.”

^{Translated by Clara Allain}