Ahead Of NASA: American Students To Land The First-Ever Robotic Rover On The Moon
According to media reports, a group of American college students wants to be the first to send a robotic rover to the moon before NASA.?Here's what we know.
US Students Are Set To Send A Robotic Rover To The Moon
Students at Pennsylvania's Carnegie Mellon University created the Iris Rover. According to Space.com, it will be launched to the Moon as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme.
The mission, which will probably launch this spring, will feature the first university student-developed robotic moon rover in America. VIPER, NASA's first robotic moon rover, is only expected to launch in 2019.
The Iris rover, which weighs 2 kg, has wheels made of carbon fibre that are the size of bottle caps. The majority of its 60-hour mission will be spent taking pictures of the moon's surface for scientific study.?
While transmitting information about its position back to Earth, it will test new localization methods.
NASA Plans To Make Multiple Bases On The Moon
According to the report,?NASA plans to construct multiple moon bases for the Artemis lunar missions in order to maximise science and exploration. A long-term strategy to establish a lasting base on the lunar surface includes NASA's objective to send astronauts back to the moon?by 2025.?
Jim Free, associate administrator for exploration systems development at NASA, says that the agency's Artemis programme may ultimately construct multiple bases around the moon rather than a single Artemis base camp at the lunar south pole as revealed in 2020. In a press conference at the 38th Space Symposium in this city, Free told reporters, "It's really hard to say we're going to have a single base camp."
"Because we might have to wait a month to return to that location if we miss a launch window." According to Free, NASA may collaborate with its international partners like the European Space Agency, Canada, or Japan, who have all joined the Artemis programme as partners, to establish a series of moon camps across the lunar surface.
As a result, Free said, "We can maybe have two or three sites to visit that help our science diversity, because the main reason we're doing Artemis is for science."
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