Nissan will design the new Rover for NASA missions to the Moon. The North American subsidiary of the brand will collaborate in its creation and development.
Taking a vehicle into space must be a historic milestone for almost any car manufacturer. Elon Musk sent a Tesla Roadster to the stars, but we are talking about creating a vehicle that can be driven on the surface of planets and satellites. Well, Nissan will design the new Rover for NASA missions to the Moon.
It will be Nissan’s subsidiary in North America that will provide its production capacity, automotive design expertise, and its self-driving and intelligent vehicle systems, since the lunar lander is to be autonomous, in a development collaboration. of NASA’s new rover.
Nissan will design the new Rover for NASA missions to the Moon
“Participation in this project enables the extension of technology and design capabilities from our industry to space technology and vice versa,” said Maarten Sierhuis, global director of the Nissan Alliance Innovation Lab in Silicon Valley ( California).
“With this partnership, we will explore the possibilities of autonomy and teleoperations, power management systems, vehicle connectivity, and human-machine interface to help shape the future of intelligent lunar rovers. We will then translate these learnings from the vehicle operating on the lunar surface to Earth,” he added.
Teledyne and Sierra Space have years of experience in space exploration. The former built the first lunar rover prototype in the 1960s and has been doing work for NASA for more than 40 years. He will be responsible for leading the team and providing program management, engineering, manufacturing, integration, operations and power systems for the vehicle.
On the other hand, Sierra Space has a history of advancing in this field and will provide the flight software, space-qualified mechanisms, communications, guidance, navigation and timing for the Lunar Rover.
Finally, Textron Specialized Vehicles will provide the chassis design, vehicle dynamics, and suspension handling.
