Northrop Grumman and team proposes lunar rover, lander models for NASA's Artemis missions

Aerospace company Northrop Grumman, in partnership with four other companies, has proposed a model of a lunar vehicle and lander to NASA for upcoming Artemis moon missions and beyond. Grumman, on November 16, announced its partners - AVL, Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost and Michelin that will put their joint efforts into building the agile, sustainable and affordable Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV). In a tweet by Grumman, it revealed that astronauts from the Apollo missions - Harrison Schmidt and Charlie Duke have also been roped in for the project who will provide their treasure trove of knowledge of the lunar surface for developing the vehicle. In a statement shared by Grumman, it said,

Supporting space exploration endeavors is not new to Northrop Grumman.  Our company has been at the forefront of human spaceflight and exploration, and we’re ready to once again bring our wealth of knowledge and experience to the table for the Artemis program. 

Mission participants and tasks assigned to them

The team of four companies that have assembled for the lunar lander and rover has been assigned specific tasks. As per Grumman, the AVL will bring its expertise in the advancement of battery systems, autonomous driving, and electric drive solutions and provide scalable tools and technologies to design, power, and utilize the LTV in extreme environments. The second member, Intuitive Machines, will provide the launch vehicle and the lander named Nova-D, which is said to have a payload capacity of 500 kilograms. The third member Lunar Outpost is at the forefront of mobility for the lunar surface. “Lunar Outpost holds key expertise in prototyping, dust mitigation and thermal technologies. Lunar Outpost carries the knowledge of the unique challenges encountered by mobility platforms on the Moon, says Grumman.

Lastly, Mereline will develop an airless tire solution for the Lunar Terrain Vehicle and it will do so by leveraging the experience it gained from previous collaborations with NASA to build lunar rovers, as per Grumman. The company has not yet revealed the size of the rover but says that the vehicle will be made to last almost ten years and will be operable manually and in auto-pilot, as per SpaceNews. 

This new proposal to NASA has joined the queue of offers as in October, German motor company Hookie has designed a lunar bike named ‘Tardigrade’ for NASA. Tap here to know more.

Image: Twitter/@northropgrumman