Venturi Space and Venturi Astrolab, Inc. (Astrolab) have teamed up to produce a lunar rover designed to respond to the growing number of institutional, businesses and scientific organisations in the US and European markets that are seeking access to the Moon for smaller payloads.
A development prototype of the rover was unveiled by Venturi Space at the 75th International Astronautical Congress in Milan this week.
Known currently by its internal name FLIP (FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform), the rover uses the same technology used by Astrolab’s FLEX rover, which was introduced in 2022. Just as with FLEX, Astrolab is responsible for the overall design and manufacturing of the rover.
Specifically, the company has developed the vehicle’s actuators, chassis, launch mount and release, avionics, solar panel, communications system, and flight and ground software.
As is also the case with FLEX, this rover relies on three key technologies when it comes to facing the extreme conditions of the lunar South Pole: proprietary materials for cryogenic conditions, hyper-deformable wheels and batteries, as well as the related testing systems and fabrication processes. Those have been designed and developed by Venturi Space facilities in Monaco, Switzerland, France, and the United States. Astrolab is leading and conducting the vehicle’s integrated testing and operations from its headquarters in California.
This rover is a key step in Astrolab’s rapid spiral development approach for FLEX: design-build-test-fly cycles that demonstrate increased capabilities and incorporate lessons learned during development and qualification testing.
The rover has a half-ton mass and a payload capacity of 30 kilograms and has been designed to be compatible with the growing number of medium-class lunar landers now entering the commercial space market. In addition, the rover offers customers opportunities to perform technology demonstrations and commercial exploration and gather valuable science data. It also features critical components, subsystems, and processes common to the core platform used by the FLEX rover.
“For 25 years, we have been pioneers in the field of high-performance electric terrestrial vehicles,” said Venturi Space President Gildo Pastor. “This expertise now allows us to offer viable and efficient solutions, in the long term, to face the hell of the lunar South Pole. Our batteries and hyper-deformable wheels can withstand temperature variations of more than 300°C, aggressive solar radiation, and 180 hours of nights under -180°C.”
“This rover offers customers many of the same payload space configurations as the larger FLEX rover we are using on our upcoming commercial mission, Mission One,” said AstroLab Founder and CEO Jaret Matthews. “This continues a goal we set for ourselves when we introduced the FLEX in 2022. We want to set the standard for lunar logistics. Just as there are standard sizes of shipping containers used in intermodal shipping on Earth, we seek to do the same on the Moon.”
The rover will be on display in Venturi Space’s exhibition booth at the International Astronautical Congress until the event’s conclusion.
