The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a legendary center of NASA, has completed the development of three small rovers that will be able to roll autonomously together on the Moon. They will soon launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Progress is being made in the intelligence of lunar rovers. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has finished assembling the three rovers for the Cadre mission. The mission’s goal is to advance the ability of robots to be autonomous on the lunar surface, without needing constant commands from Earth’s control center. Another objective is to successfully have these three rovers rolling at the same time!
New Generation of Rovers
The Cadre (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration) technology demonstration mission aims to give more decision-making freedom to the three rovers. They will explore the surface together and communicate with each other. This will allow them to take measurements from different locations, a task that a single rover would take longer to accomplish.
According to JPL, the mission’s success could pave a new path for exploration, with the possibility of conducting scientific measurements across different areas instead of just one. There is also an opportunity to use these rovers as assistance for astronauts on the surface, which will be necessary for farther Artemis missions.
Launch in 2024-2025
Each rover weighs only a few tens of kilograms and is the size of a small suitcase. The three rovers will be delivered to the lunar region Reiner Gamma by a commercial lunar lander from the American company Intuitive Machines (known for its earlier Odysseus mission), as part of NASA’s CLPS program (mission IM-3).
The JPL teams have conducted numerous tests on the rovers and their flight software code. The tests were carried out in terrain simulating the Martian surface. The rovers were able to roll together in formation, adjust their plan as a group, and share terrain information among themselves. If one of them ran out of battery, the other two would stop to wait for it to recharge.