Toyota appears set to do something only General Motors has done before: Put a car on the moon.
The Japanese automaker is working with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to develop a new lunar rover for the agency’s new moon mission, which is targeted for 2030. However, more details are set to be announced next week.
“We are planning to cooperate with Toyota in an exploration mission to the moon,” a JAXA spokesperson told SkyNews.
In the meantime, Toyota engineers are preparing for the auto company’s first-ever space project save a small robot it developed for use on International Space Station. However, the first-ever may not be the only one as Toyota is also set to announce a joint project “on mobility and a space probe,” the news agency noted.
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According to the Jiji Press news agency, the “mobility method” which Toyota is working on could be used on the lunar surface, where JAXA aims to land an astronaut by 2030.
Thus far, only three countries: the U.S., Russia and China have landed spacecraft on the moon, although Israel aims to be the fourth with a craft it launched last month. The U.S. plans to revisit the moon in 2024.
Toyota has a fair bit of lead time to develop its lunar rover; however, GM had only about six months to put its 1 horsepower – four .25 hp electric motors – model together for NASA. The project, which was the first of its kind, presented engineers with a slew of unique challenges.
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“When our team began engineering for the Lunar Rover, there were so many unknowns, including varied terrain, extreme temperatures and the effect of reduced gravity,” Ferenc Pavlics, the project’s chief engineer, told TheNewsWheel.com. “We pushed the boundaries of automotive technology and worked hand in hand with the astronauts on the vehicle’s design.”
The rover is just a little more than 10 feet long, weighs a smidge under 500 pounds and carries two astronauts. The vehicle had to be designed to allow astronauts using space suits to drive it, which is a more difficult task than it may appear. The batteries powered it to 57 miles of moon travel.
On July 26, 1971, the rover went up into space along with mission commander David Scott and pilots James Irwin and Alfred Worden. It performed well and similar versions of the vehicle were used for the Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 missions.
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Toyota will have a bit longer to develop its lunar rover, but no preliminary sketches or models have been shown.
I didn’t realize GM built the US rover for NASA.
According to Wiki: “The original cost-plus-incentive-fee contract to Boeing (with Delco as a major sub-contractor)”. Since Delco was owned by GM, they get the credit?
It was a GM subsidiary so, yes, they do.
Paul E.