Rovers the size of a carry-on suitcase are headed to the moon
Before humans head back to the lunar surface, an army of autonomous mini rovers will head there first.
The trio of small rovers will launch to the moon as early as this year to collect data and test to see if they can successfully work together as a team without a lot of help from Earth.
The CADRE rovers will act as a team on the moon, but their mission is autonomous. The rovers are even able to select a leader as they complete different tasks.
Although they are independent, they will be sending data and images back to Earth during the mission, but this kind of technology could inspire future robotic missions on the moon and possibly one day other planets.
CADRE’s principal investigator, Jeane-Pierre de la Croix, said the selection of a leader is not something that happens on Earth. The rovers select a leader during the mission on the moon.
“They basically, make sure that there's somebody that's in charge of deciding how the work is going to get done in some ways, also supervise it right because the tasks might take a little bit of time, and things might change,” de la Croix said. “So, you always need somebody on the team that can kind of monitor that and make decisions and plan for the team throughout their task.”
CADRE’s program manager Shuba Comandur said these rovers will open up a new scientific path for space exploration and help future manned missions.
“These robots can work with humans, even though they take away a lot of the tedious tasks that we don't want the astronauts to do, to help with construction in situ, mining for resources and looking for resources, mapping areas, exploring previously unexplored areas, or going into more extreme terrain that we wouldn't want to send the astronauts into,” Comandur said. “But the fact that they work together means they can take measurements at the same time but separated in different places.
The future of deep space exploration communications
An Italian space company is trying to develop new technology that will aid future planetary missions as humanity tries to explore our solar system like never before.
Argotec has been working on developing small transponders called UST-lite to help stay connected as we explore deep space.
Corbett Hoenninger, the general manager for Argotec, said the reason for the development of this deep communication system is to aid future missions. He said it is vital to build this technology up so humanity can explore more opportunities in space.
“How did we really get New York to talk to California or the US to talk to Europe?” Hoenninger said. “We had to have this communication infrastructure to be able to do it, if we wanted to get around the planet, we had to have these communication satellites. The satellite system we have right now is really designed for Earth. It's all for low earth orbit, and to bounce signals from space to Earth. And nothing's really designed for Deep Space, lunar, Mars, or any of these other things.”
Hoenninger said the goal is to launch a few of these satellites in a pathfinder mission, and hopefully keep adding more satellites as time goes on.
“So, you take smaller satellites that are designed to only last five years, versus these giant satellites that are designed to last 20 to 30 years,” Hoenninger said. “And what that helps you is it helps you get it to the market faster, deploy them faster, they're cheaper to build and deploy. But also, every couple of years, you can keep adding to it and getting more and more capability at it.”
