Nighttime rover exploration

Unfortunately you can’t test a rover’s ability to traverse the Moon without actually going there. European Space Agency (ESA) engineers have done the next best thing: drive a test rover across Tenerife at night in order to simulate the low-light conditions on the lunar surface.

Tenerife’s Teide National Park recently accommodated the ESA’s Heavy Duty Planetary Rover to gain experience with the craft’s navigation hardware and software on volcanic and rocky ground. This terrain at night is supposed to simulate the conditions at the Moon’s poles, which the space agency hopes to explore in the near future.