NASA is counting on Astrobotic’s CubeRover’s batteries and electronics to survive the frigid lunar night, where temperatures can plummet as low as – 200 C.
That’s why the American space agency has selected Astrobotic to develop, test, and fly lunar night survival and communication technologies on the company’s moon rover, under NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Sequential Phase II program. The plan is for the CubeRover to test these technologies on the Moon in 2025, after placing a CubeRover there using an Astrobotic-built lunar lander.
“We’re going to be having a ‘Survive The Night’ system on board,” said Mike Provenzano, Astrobotic’s Director of Lunar Surface Systems. “It’s a really exciting thermal control system that I can’t share too many details about publicly at the moment. But ultimately the really innovative novel part about this is that it’s all going to fit in the form factor of a rover that’s the size of a toaster.” (Note: Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc. has subcontracted Astrobotic, under a separate NASA Sequential SBIR worth $1.8 million, to develop, integrate, and demonstrate lunar night thermal systems onboard lunar rovers and landers.)
This same mission will see the CubeRover demonstrate its ability to communicate with Earth-based operators via satellites in lunar orbit. “This is going to enable our Rover to drive very far — several kilometres — which is very novel because most rovers that are operating on missions today cannot drive beyond line of sight,” said Provenzano. This is because these rovers have to communicate directly with their landers, he explained, which are linked to Earth via high power transmitters. Some large rovers do have the ability to go further thanks to having onboard direct-to-Earth transmission systems, he added, but doing so “usually requires heavy antennas and lots of power” onboard.
Astrobotic’s communication strategy is based on an educated gamble. “We’re baselining that there are going to be satellites in lunar orbit, and there are a number of different providers that are competing to provide those satellite services,” said Provenzano.
Under its current business strategy, Astrobotic is building three different-sized versions of the box-like CubeRover, which will be able to carry third-party payloads measuring up to 30 cm by 20 cm by 10 cm in size. (It is also making a much larger rover called Polaris.) This Pittsburgh-based company is also building two lunar landing platforms: The Peregrine (payload up to 120 kg) and the Griffin (payload up to 500 kg, which will carry NASA’s water-detecting VIPER rover to the Moon’s south pole in 2023).
Astrobotic was founded in 2007 to compete for the Google Lunar XPRIZE. The company’s initial focus was on building a lunar rover for that competition, until they realized that placing their rover on the Moon was also an issue. “So that’s when we entered into the lander business,” Provenzano said.
Along with the CubeRover and VIPER NASA contracts, the company is working on two other lunar missions, with some of their work including private sector participation. The Peregrine lander will be flown to the Moon using the United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket. “We’re going to be using SpaceX’s Falcon heavy rocket for the Griffin Lander,” he concluded.