Sending a rover into space, landing on a celestial body, and spinning its wheels is no easy task. NASA has used all kinds of technology. Pathfinder rover In 1997, it landed on Mars with airbags wrapped around it, rolling the lander’s “petals” open like flowers onto the dusty surface.Cables attached to rocket-powered ‘Skycrane’ spacecraft fell Perseverance The Mars rover will reach the surface of Mars in 2021. On the moon, the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 astronauts pulled Mylar his cable to deploy and unload the buggy from the compact storage compartment of the lunar module vehicle.
But NASA’s first-ever rover mission to the lunar south pole will use a more familiar method for locomotion on Earth’s moons: a pair of lamps. When VIPER (short for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) lands on the moon in late 2024, it will tumble down the off-ramp to touch lunar soil, or regolith.
This is familiar technology in harsh places. His VIPER program manager at NASA said: “We all know how to use lamps. All we have to do is optimize them for the future environment.” Daniel Andrews.
A VIPER test vehicle recently descended a pair of metal ramps at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. Photos recently released by the agency, with one beam for each set of rover wheels. Because the terrain that VIPER will land on is the edge of a giant planet. Norville Crater— The engineering team has been testing the VIPER’s ability to descend the ramp at extreme angles because conditions are expected to be tough. They changed the steepness measured from the VIPER descending lander and the height difference between the ramps on each wheel.
“We have two ramps, one set for the left and right wheels as well as a set of ramps in the back,” says Andrews. “So, at the moment we have to fall off the lander, we actually choose which litter, the litter we think is the safest and best to maneuver.”
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VIPER is NASA’s lunar crater observation and sensing satellite, or Mission of LCROSSin 2009 confirmed the presence of water ice at the lunar south pole.
“It completely rewrote the lunar book on water,” says Andrews, who also worked on the LCROSS mission. “This really marked the beginning of the moon rush, both commercially and by national actors such as NASA and other space agencies.”
If ice is plentiful, it could be mined to make rocket propellant. It could also provide water for other purposes in a long-term lunar habitat that NASA plans to build in the late 2020s as part of the Artemis Lunar Program.
But LCROSS only confirmed the presence of ice in a single crater at the lunar south pole. The rover VIPER will investigate the distribution of water ice in more detail. Drilling under the moon is also a job. Another is to move into a steep and permanently shaded area. The crater has not received sunlight for billions of years due to its sharp shape and low sun angle at the lunar pole.
Tests demonstrated that the rover could easily navigate a 15 degree slope. This is enough to explore these hidden dark spots without having to create machines designed for more complex descents. “I think there are a lot of scientifically relevant opportunities without having to build a superhero rover that can do crazy things,” says Andrews.
Developed by NASA Ames and Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic, the VIPER is a square, golf-cart-sized vehicle about five feet long and wide and about eight feet tall. Unlike NASA’s other Mars rovers, VIPER has his four wheels instead of his six.
“The problem with six wheels is that they create the equivalent of a truck, so you have to drive it a certain way,” says Andrews. Each of VIPER’s four wheels is completely independent. Not only do they roll in all directions, they also turn using the rover’s shoulder-like joints and crawl out of the kind of soft regolith that scientists believe exists in the permanently shadowed lunar craters. You can go out. The wheels themselves are very similar to those of Mars rovers, but with more paddle-like treads known as glausers to carry the robot through the fluffy regolith.
“My favorite metaphor is that we have the ability to dip our toes. [permanently shadowed region]’ says Andrews. “If we are surprised or disliked by what we discover, we have the ability to tip our toes out, roll on three wheels, and roll back.”
But VIPER can’t travel very far without being able to get off the ramp from the lander. So Andrews and his team have spent a lot of time testing that procedure. Initially, the wheels of our VIPER test vehicle slipped for a fraction of a second as we descended the ramp.
“We also found that we could drive over the walls of the rampway,” says Andrews. “That’s probably not what you want.”
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Working with Astrobotic, Andrews and his team modified the ramp, which now features special etchings along the length of the ramp. The rover can detect this pattern along the rampway using a camera in the wheel hangar. “Just look down,” he says, and the robot can tell where it is. “That’s a new touch.”
Andrews believes VIPER will be ready for deployment in 2024, but many adjustments are needed. Ultimately, the method is less complicated than a sky crane, he says. “Slope is pretty proven.”