NASA develops mini rovers to explore the Moon without human help in 2024

NASA is planning to send a trio of rovers to explore and learn more about the characteristics and topography of the Moon starting in 2024. These rovers will be part of the CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration) project aimed at exploring the Reiner Gamma area which is part of the huge Oceanus Procellarum region west of the Moon's visible side.

(The Reiner Gamma region near the Equator of the Moon; Image: NASA)

According to NASA, these rovers will be part of the technology demonstration mission to see if they can cooperate with each other on the Moon without human intervention from Earth. No bigger than a suitcase, the rovers will be lowered in the sunlit Reiner Gamma area and use their solar panels to test their communication capabilities for 14 Earth days. These tiny rovers will be sent aboard a lander and a 'leader' rover will be programmed to send commands to its 'subordinates' to complete their assigned tasks. The lander will be observing the rovers throughout the entire mission. 

"Our mission is to demonstrate that a network of mobile robots can cooperate to accomplish a task without human intervention – autonomously,” said Subha Comandur, the CADRE project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement. 

Challenges before the mission

NASA says that the mission extends beyond testing the autonomy of the rovers as they will be faced with multiple challenges on the lunar surface. The first would be staying on course while exploring a designated area of about 4,300 square feet (400 square meters). The rovers will be equipped with sensors to detect and avoid obstructions while creating a topographic 3D map with their cameras. They will be tasked with creating a 3D image of the structure of the subsurface as much as 33 feet (10 meters) below. Mission teams will also have to prepare for scenarios where the rovers would stop working for some reason and chalk out a plan to adapt to the situation.

Another challenge would be surviving in the harsh lunar environment as the rovers could face temperatures up to 114° C during daytime. To make sure the robotic explorers don't get cooked, the mission teams have resorted to 30-minute wake-sleep cycles in which the rovers will shut down for cooling via their radiators and recharge their batteries every half hour. After awakening simultaneously, the rovers will share their health status with a Wi-Fi-like network and they'll elect a new 'leader' out of the fittest ones for another round of exploration.

The Moon is a hotbed of exploration for NASA as it is planning to establish a permanent sustainable lunar base in the Moon's south pole for a higher aim of trips to Mars. It is for this reason NASA is working on the Artemis Program which began with the launch of Artemis 1 on November 16, 2022. This program will again put humans on the Moon probably by 2025 during Artemis 3.

However, China and Europe also have plans to land their astronauts on the Moon. While Europe is a key partner of the US in the Artemis Program, China is running a parallel program with an aim to put Chinese nationals on the lunar surface by the end of this decade. India is one of the nations in the Moon race but its participation is currently limited to unmanned missions. The latest one of them is Chandrayaan-3 which was launched by ISRO on July 14 and is scheduled for a landing at 5:47 pm IST on August 23, if everything goes as per plan. The Chandrayaan spacecraft is headed for the Southern Pole of the Moon which is suspected to be rich in water ice and hasn't been explored before. NASA also has its fingers crossed for the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 as it hopes to utilise the data that will be extracted from this mission.