Three miniature lunar mapping vehicles have reportedly completed testing in NASA’s clean room and are preparing to be shipped to Intuitive Machines. There they will be placed on the descending Nova-C module, famous for its emergency landing in February this year, and will be delivered to the lunar surface along with other payloads later this year or early next year.

The three small rovers are equipped with stereo cameras and ground-penetrating radars that can look down to 10 m. The module will land them on the Moon in a field called Rainier Gamma. There appear to be magnetic anomalies in this area and GPR data may shed light on the situation. However, the main purpose of the experiment will be the teamwork of the rovers in surveying and mapping the entrusted area.

Each bike will be able to explore approximately 400m² lunar surface. They will be monitored by a camera 4 m above the landing module (hopefully the module will land vertically and not like last time). Rovers will help each other in choosing a route to bypass or bypass obstacles. They will determine the host machine themselves and coordinate their actions with its help. The mission’s hardware and software components were tested at NASA’s “Martian” test site, where all rovers were tested, and in the final phase in NASA’s clean room.

Before that, all three miniature platforms were tested in a vibration simulator to evaluate the resistance of the platform to acceleration during launch of the launch vehicle, as well as in a thermal vacuum chamber, where vacuum and lunar conditions were simulated. In particular, the lunar rover was tested for its ability to withstand sharp temperature changes during the transition from light to shadow, where the temperature can change by hundreds of degrees Celsius in seconds. But they are not designed for a moonlit night. The rovers will operate for 14 Earth days (one lunar day) and it looks like they won’t survive a lunar night.