'PROMISE' Me the Moon? NASA Wants to Send Spare Nuclear-Powered Mars Rover to the Lunar Surface
NASA is assessing whether Mars rover hardware could be modified for lunar science as it races to support a human return to the Moon.
- On Tuesday, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced four new commercial lunar lander contracts worth $600 million while revealing the agency is considering repurposing a Mars test rover named PROMISE for a lunar mission.
- The contracts fall under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, which supports the Moon Base Program to establish a permanent human outpost by the 2030s.
- NASA engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory tested PROMISE extensively in a Mars rock yard; the rover's nuclear power source enables exploration in permanently shadowed craters without relying on sunlight.
- Astrobotic received two contracts, while Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines secured one each, bringing the total of upcoming NASA missions to 17.
- To build a permanent presence, Phase 2 will establish moon base operating capability between 2029 and 2032, with Phase 3 beyond 2032 aiming for a semi-permanent crew presence on the moon.
13 Articles
13 Articles
The U.S. space agency NASA may want to send a rover originally developed for Mars exploration to the Moon. The model designed for the Red Planet is to be adapted for the Earth's satellite. It is a "development version" of the unmanned Mars rover "Perseverance" and "Curiosity", which NASA announced at a press conference. However, the plans are not yet finalized.Manned Moon Station planned from the 2030sOn the other hand, four further unmanned mis…
Most of NASA’s first Moon-base robots will depend on solar power, which makes the two-week lunar night one of the whole project’s nastiest problems — but NASA is now considering an odd workaround: sending PROMISE, a JPL engineering twin of its nuclear-powered Mars rovers, to the lunar south pole.
The first hard problem for a Moon base is not building something that works in sunlight. It is building something that still works when sunlight disappears. Most early lunar surface systems are expected to lean heavily on solar power. That makes sense: sunlight is available, solar arrays are mature, and carrying fuel from Earth is expensive. But the Moon’s day-night rhythm is brutal for machines. Away from special polar lighting conditions, a lu…
'PROMISE' me the moon? NASA wants to send spare nuclear-powered Mars rover to the lunar surface
NASA provided an Artemis update today (June 30), announcing new lunar landing contracts for its Moon Base initiative and a surprise new possible rover mission that could be headed to the moon's south pole. During the second monthly update that NASA has provided for its moon base plans, the agency named Astrobotic, Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines as the providers of four robotic landers that will deliver scientific payloads to the surfac…
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