Lunar Outpost groups with Lockheed Martin and Business to develop a human-rated Moon rover as a part of the company’s Artemis marketing campaign
DENVER, April 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — NASA has awarded a Lunar Terrain Car Companies (LTVS) contract to the Lunar Daybreak group, led by Lunar Outpost because the prime contractor together with its principal companion Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) and teammates Basic Motors (GM), The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Firm, and MDA House. The various group combines confirmed robotic and human area exploration heritage, leading edge expertise and automotive business strengths to create a real off-road car for dwelling and dealing on the Moon’s floor.
The Mission
This next-generation Lunar Terrain Car (LTV) will allow the exploration of the floor of the Moon in unprecedented style as a part of NASA’s Artemis marketing campaign. It can dramatically lengthen the vary that astronauts can journey from their touchdown websites as they carry out high-priority science investigations on the Moon. When not in use by NASA, the LTV will present business providers, contributing to a extra accessible and sustainable cislunar financial system.
“Floor mobility is a essential functionality for humanity’s future in area, and Lunar Outpost appears ahead to driving worth within the cislunar financial system by offering a dependable, secure and succesful car that can be used to supply mobility to Artemis astronauts and carry out essential missions autonomously on the Moon for business endeavors,” stated Lunar Outpost CEO, Justin Cyrus. “We sit up for leveraging the strengths of Lockheed Martin, an organization with in depth human and superior area methods expertise, and our different business teammates, GM, Goodyear and MDA House, to supply an unparalleled technical providing at a commercially viable value level.”
The Car
The Lunar Daybreak LTV will afford Artemis astronauts with an distinctive expertise rooted in security and comfort, together with a flight deck-forward design that gives expansive views for navigating the difficult lunar atmosphere.
“These distinctive applied sciences will allow the way forward for essential infrastructure required for a sustainable presence in area the place people can dwell, work removed from Earth,” stated Kirk Shireman, vp of Lunar Exploration Campaigns at Lockheed Martin. “Lockheed Martin is thrilled to be combining experience with a various set of firms to embark on this subsequent technology rover that may broaden exploration and our understanding of the lunar floor.”
The Lunar Daybreak group’s car exceeds all the necessities set forth by NASA and was designed with mission development functionality in thoughts. A number of of the car’s capabilities and options embody:
- Superior autonomous navigation and operation, with or with out astronauts onboard.
- Capabilities for sturdy and various business use, together with a reconfigurable cargo mattress that enables for the altering of payloads with its sturdy robotic arm.
- The power to not solely survive, however to function, through the two-week lengthy lunar nights with temperatures right down to -280 levels Fahrenheit; this novel expertise extends mission life from days to a few years.
The Business Group
The Lunar Daybreak group is comprised of titans of their respective industries, who’ve been chosen for his or her main expertise and confirmed potential to ship area methods that may reliably function within the hardest circumstances.
Because the lead of the Lunar Daybreak Group, Lunar Outpost is pioneering a brand new teaming paradigm for the area business. Lunar Outpost brings its velocity and agility, monitor file of enterprise capital traders, eager understanding of the business market and direct lunar rover expertise to this program. Lunar Outpost makes a speciality of superior spacecraft and robotic methods. As the one firm presently contracted to design 4 lunar rovers and two already constructed and certified, Lunar Outpost is the main business planetary mobility supplier. Lunar Outpost’s business Lunar Rover missions reaching the Moon this yr will function LTVS pathfinder missions that allow the group the unique potential to check applied sciences and collect information to additional the LTV improvement.
- Lockheed Martin brings many years of expertise delivering extremely complicated deep area automobiles together with the complexities that include human area flight on packages like Orion, Human Touchdown System Cislunar Transporter and planetary missions akin to Lucy and OSIRIS-REx.
- Basic Motors is bringing its superior Ultium EV battery expertise together with in depth chassis and suspension improvement heritage. Basic Motors’ expertise on Lunar Floor mobility goes again to their contributions to the wheels, motor, and suspension of NASA’s Lunar Roving Car through the Apollo Program.
- Goodyear is growing the rover’s tires leveraging years of expertise in lunar mobility, relationship again to Apollo missions.
- MDA House attracts from many years of expertise in human spaceflight robotics and is offering the robotic arm and robotic interfaces, enabling a flexible potential to position and keep business payloads.
ABOUT LUNAR OUTPOST
Lunar Outpost is an business chief in lunar floor mobility, business area robotics, and area sources. From our terrestrial product traces revolutionizing the air high quality sector on Earth to the creation of oxygen on Mars, our influence spans the photo voltaic system. Lunar Outpost’s exploration class rover, the Cellular Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP), would be the first business rover on the Moon and the primary rover in historical past to discover the lunar South Pole.
Since our founding in 2017, Lunar Outpost has raised Enterprise Capital from top-tier traders and continues to draw robust funding companions as we proceed to show the chance that superior mobility, robotics and autonomy offers to the brand new area financial system and right here on Earth. In 2021, Lunar Outpost introduced that our commercially funded MAPP rover—together with payload mass allocations for MIT and Nokia — was scheduled for supply by an Intuitive Machines lander to the lunar South Pole. Lunar Outpost has since secured two further contracted lunar floor missions, one in all which is absolutely business and the opposite a NASA funded science exploration rover. Along with the three missions above, Lunar Outpost has additionally received a contract with the Australian House Company to design and develop a lunar rover for Australia’s first mission to the Moon as a part of the Trailblazer program.
With over a dozen lively contracts throughout business, protection and civil area, Lunar Outpost is The Subsequent Leap that may allow humanity to turn into interplanetary.
Discover out extra at lunaroutpost.com. Comply with us on X, LinkedIn, Instagram.
ABOUT LOCKHEED MARTIN
Lockheed Martin is a world protection expertise firm driving innovation and advancing scientific discovery. Our all-domain mission options and twenty first Century Safety imaginative and prescient speed up the supply of transformative applied sciences to make sure these we serve all the time keep forward of prepared. Extra info at lockheedmartin.com.
CONTACTS:
Gary Napier
Lockheed Martin, gary.p.napier@lmco.com
Courtney Cowan
Lunar Outpost, courtney@lunaroutpost.com
