Lunar Rover Initiative Design Home Page

The design group is chartered with configuring, and designing a rover which can travel a 1000km, returning live-panaromic video, and last for two years. In addition, to these unprecedented robotic capabilities, the Lunar environment poses a primary challenge to the rover designers Currently, night operations and two rovers are being considered. The intended transport vehicle is an International Space Enterprises (phobos class) lander atop a Proton launcher capable of delivering approximately 17,000kg into low Earth orbit. The design team has been developing its knowledge and ideas through a series of reviewed designs. These previous designs provide the background from which the final configuration will be chosen. The design activity is split into three task forces:

• The configuration group which provides technology depth, and analysis tools.
• The software group lead by members of the SEI (Software Engineering Institute), which drives the overall software design, overall operation, and mission planning methods.
• The Mobile Robot Design course providing concepts and configuration to be matured to preliminary design by September.

The design of the rover is now in its final configuration stages, and a preliminary design review is expected by fiscal year end. For the technically inclined, technology list gives a glimpse of the primary challenges and the possible solutions.