The Iris Rover was designed by students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania. It will be launched to the Moon as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, according to Space.com.
Students in the United States intend to land a robotic rover on the moon.
An American team of students, who are part of the “Lunar Lion” project, are set to make history by landing the first-ever robotic rover on the moon. This is an incredible achievement for a team of students and it has been made possible with the help of cutting-edge technology such as AI and robotics.
The Lunar Lion project is a collaboration between Penn State University and Lockheed Martin. The team has developed a lunar lander that will be able to safely land on the moon’s surface. Once there, it will deploy a robotic rover that will be able to explore its surroundings and collect data about the environment.
The project is also backed by NASA, who have provided funding for research and development as well as technical advice from their experts. With this support, American students have taken one step closer to achieving their goal of being the first ever to land a robotic rover on the moon before NASA.
The project, which is expected to launch this spring, will include America’s first college student-developed robotic lunar rover. VIPER, NASA’s first robotic lunar rover, will not be launched until 2019.
The Iris rover, which weighs 2 kg, features carbon fibre wheels the size of bottle caps. The majority of its 60-hour mission will be spent photographing the moon’s surface for scientific research.
It will test new localisation technologies while relaying knowledge of its position back to Earth.
NASA intends to build many moon bases:
NASA intends to build many moon bases for the Artemis lunar mission in order to optimise science and exploration, according to the article. NASA’s goal of returning men to the moon by 2025 is part of a long-term strategy for establishing a permanent presence on the lunar surface.
According to Jim Free, NASA’s assistant administrator for exploratory systems development, the agency’s Artemis project may eventually build numerous bases around the moon rather than the single Artemis base camp disclosed in 2020. Free told reporters at the 38th Space Symposium in this city, “It’s really hard to say that we’re going to have a single base camp.”
“Because we could be waiting up to a month before going back to that location if we miss the launch window.” According to Free, NASA may work with foreign partners such as the European Space Agency, Canada, and Japan, all of whom have joined the Artemis programme as partners, to create a series of moon camps around the lunar surface.
As a consequence, according to Free, “we can possibly choose two or three sites to visit that help our science variation, because the primary reason that we’re doing Artemis is for science.”
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