A HIGHER PURPOSE
CMU plans to send the first U.S. moon rover into space in 2021
If all goes as planned, Carnegie Mellon University wants to send the first U.S. robotic moon rover to space in July 2021.
The university in Oakland is contracting with Astrobotic, one of three private space companies that NASA has funded to carry payloads to the lunar surface.
Last week, the space agency awarded the Downtown-based firm $79.5 million to carry 28 of those payloads, including the CMU rover weighing about 4 pounds.
That’s half the size of a typical house cat — far smaller than the Soviet Union’s “Lunokhod 1,” the first robot rover to land on the moon in 1970, which weighed about as much as a buffalo. It’s also tinier than Yutu, China’s first — and panda-sized — rover to land on the moon in 2013.
Specific financials of the deal between CMU and Astrobotic were not disclosed, but a press release noted that the university “independently negotiated” with the company to hitch a ride to the moon.
Typically, Astrobotic charges its customers $1.2 million per kilogram to secure a spot on its Peregrine Lander.
When it does make its first trip to the moon, the Peregrine Lander will rely on its rugged, radiationtolerant computing inside, plus its sturdy external structure. It’s designed to easily release rovers like CMU’s through the underside of the Lander’s deck.
Peregrine will use a propulsion system with five engines to make the 238,900-mile trip to the moon.
William “Red” Whittaker, a noted roboticist who led Carnegie Mellon to victory in the 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge — which propelled autonomous vehicles research in Pittsburgh — will spearhead CMU’s mini-rover project. DARPA stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Equipped with video cameras, the rover will collect images, specifically around the Lacus Mortis, a large crater on the near side of the moon where Astrobotic is
The university in Oakland is contracting with Astrobotic, one of three private space companies that NASA has funded to carry payloads to the lunar surface.
planning to ground the Peregrine Lander.
The images collected will not only teach the CMU team what the effects are of landing a tiny rover onto the moon’s surface — and if it even can — but will also exhibit what the terrain truly looks like, down to the size and types of rocks.
For the CMU project to begin, “The stars had to align,” Mr. Whittaker said.
The Trump administration has a stated goal of putting astronauts back on the moon by 2024. Long story short, NASA is finally doling out cash for moonshots again.
Mr. Whittaker, an original founder of Astrobotic, has been dreaming of landing on the moon for decades — since he was a child, really.
In 2008, he told the PostGazette he expected at least $90 billion would be spent on lunar exploration over the following 10 years.
Now? “Some say it’s on its way to becoming a multitrillion-dollar industry,” Mr. Whittaker said.
It’ll still be daunting to get it right, he added.
For one, there’s extreme temperatures. Just as the human body must regulate its internal conditions to remain exactly 98.6 degrees, the rover must keep its inside climate stable to prevent electrical failures.
That’s an earthly problem for tech, too.
Car batteries struggle when the temperatures dip. According to the AAA, a Heathrow, Fla.-based nonprofit, a car battery loses about 35 percent of its power at freezing point and up to 60 percent at zero degrees.
The moon is harsher. The surface is hot as an oven during a moon day — which lasts about 14 Earth days — and as cold as liquid nitrogen during its 14 days of nighttime.
Embracing the bitter environment is key to the solution, Mr. Whittaker said.
“The good news about not having an atmosphere is that when you look up [on the moon], you’re looking directly into deep space … everything around you looks black,” he said.
That blackness is nearly absolute zero, as cold as it can get. If the rover’s radiators point out at that cold, deep space, it’s possible to “dump the heat” when you want to get rid of it, Mr. Whittaker said.
And to keep warm? Immensely powerful insulation — plus taking a page from the human body. Just as people have a metabolism to create heat, so do robots.
Then there’s the matter of space dust.
Think about it like talcum powder. Space dust has sharp grains that can destroy the rover’s innards.
“If the dust comes off your wheels and gets on your radiator, you’re starting to insulate yourself and you no longer have that efficient cooling,” he said.
Plus, the dust can get into the wheels and motors, potentially destroying them.
Right now, Mr. Whittaker’s team is a group of 12 CMU students, though he expects that to grow as time goes on.
There’s always the potential the Astrobotic lander won’t make it to the moon. Or that it does, but the CMU rover dies.
Mr. Whittaker has been in this position before with malfunctioning self-driving cars and tractors.
“That’s just a blip, this isn’t a one-mission show,” he said. “This very small rover is far from my last moon rover.”
All things considered, Mr. Whittaker remains realistic.
“America has never had a moon rover,” he said. “Who knows what could be? Just because it’s your commitment, doesn’t mean that it’s going to succeed.”