Britain is to launch a robotic ‘space spider’ to the Moon in 2021, the first time a walking rover has been sent to explore a distant world.
The little probe - called Asagumo - has been designed by London-based robotics experts Spacebit, and is scheduled to hitch a ride to the lunar surface with Nasa next summer.
It will mark the first time a British rover has gone to the Moon, and engineers at Spacebit chose legs instead of wheels so that it can pick its way over bumpy terrain, and crawl through underground lava tubes to see if they could be habitable for humans.
Many experts now believe that lava tubes - tunnel-like chambers in the rock created by rivers of lava billions of years ago - could provide natural shelters and so are a good place to set up the first colonies.
The Moon is a treacherous environment for astronauts, because temperatures can drop to below -274F (-170C) during the lunar night, and the surface is bombarded by solar radiation and micro-meteorites.
Although the largest lava tubes on Earth only reach around 60ft wide, on the Moon they can be hundreds of feet wide and could be sealed to contain breathable air.
The rocky roof also provides a ready-made shield against harmful radiation and the temperature inside falls to just -4F to -22 (-20C to -30C), so the tubes could be heated to a comfortable level.
One tube, discovered in the Marius Hills region is at least 1,000 yards wide and tall, and could house small cities. There may be a large underground network, from when volcanic activity was rife on the Moon.
Spacebit CEO Pavlo Tanasyuk said designing a rover with legs was crucial to finding out if lava tubes are useful for habitation.
“There are plans to return to the Moon in the future and we will have to live somewhere, and one option might be to seal the entrance of the larva tube and use that as a shelter,” he said.
“We believe this rover will play a role in exploring that possibility. It will be walking across the Moon not driving, so it can go on rugged terrain and explore those parts you can’t get to normally,” he said.
“If you want to go long distances you take the car, but if you want to climb something, you use your legs, so it’s more suited to that kind of exploration.”
Designing a rover that can walk on the Moon is difficult because the surface is covered in a thick dusty layer known as regolith which spindly legs could sink into. The dust is also bad for clogging up working parts, as the Apollo astronauts discovered.
Asagumo is just 3.9 inches tall (10cm) so it needs to be able to glide over the surface otherwise it would sink. To solve the problem, the probe has four spindly legs with a flat pad at the bottom, like ski poles.
It will also carry instruments capable of measuring radiation and on future missions may be able to prospect for precious metals and minerals. It will also be the first rover to be connected to the lander by wifi so cannot stray too far from its original drop off point.
If it does lose connection it has in-built drone technology to attempt to fly back to the lander but without GPS the team would be flying blind.
But at a launch cost of just £3 million the rover could be attractive for companies looking for places to mind valuable resources.
Mr Tanasyuk said: “We’re hoping to find some lava tubes near the landing site because we can’t travel too far away because of the wifi limitation and we only have very basic artificial intelligence on board.
“First of all it’s a technology demonstrator mission and that would be the most important and the ability to transfer images and take basic measurements, but obviously we would try to do our best and explore as many areas as possible and maybe we can find something interesting.
“There are many scientific uses for the rover because you can get information about the environment and we can explore and find out where to mine on the Moon in future.”
The first rover is due to launch around late summer next year, onboard the first of Nasa’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) missions which are being sent in advance of Artemis - the US mission to return humans to the Moon.
The target landing site is Vallis Schröteri (Schröter's Valley) in the Moon’s Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms) which is flat, free of craters and rocks, and has abundant sunlight.
Spacebit is also hoping to send up a second wheeled rover at the end of 2021. In future missions the walking robot may ride on the wheeled rover until the terrain becomes too difficult then be deployed to carry on alone.
And if successful it could travel further afield, to explore more far flung worlds, such as Mars or other moons.
January 02, 2021 at 04:30AM
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/01/britain-send-space-spider-moon/
Britain to send a space spider to the Moon - Telegraph.co.uk
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