At the 37th Space Symposium MDA announced that they’ll be providing robotic arm technology to the Lunar Mobility Vehicle (LMV) effort of partners Lockheed Martin and General Motors as part of NASA’s Artemis Mission’s Lunar Terrain Vehicle opportunity.
General Motors and Lockheed Martin had signed a teaming deal to design and create the rovers back in 2021. Now, MDA said that they’ll be joining the team and contributing MDA’s “unparalleled heritage and capabilities in space robotics”, according to Holly Johnson, MDA’s VP Robotics and Space Operations in an email exchange with SpaceQ.Â
Lockheed Martin will lead the team, leveraging its experience building spacecraft and working with NASA. General Motors will provide “state-of-the-art battery-electric technologies and propulsion systems.” And now, Canada’s own MDA will provide the robotic manipulators.
The Lunar Mobility Vehicle was previously described by Lockheed Martin as the “next generation of lunar rovers.” While a Lunar Mobility Vehicle can work much like previous lunar rovers, carrying goods and personnel on the Moon with a human driver at the wheel, these new rovers can also act as autonomous self-driving vehicles, being able to (according to Lockheed Martin) “conduct science operations without a driver,” and to perform other autonomous tasks that leave humans on the Moon able to focus on other tasks. Effective remote manipulators will be critical for those tasks.
According to Johnson, there will be 1-2 weeks of crewed missions every year, with the rest of the time taken up by these autonomous uncrewed missions. Johnson also said that while the Artemis program may be returning to the Moon in 2025, “the first vehicle will be delivered to the Moon ahead of the first crewed mission”, allowing them to “dramatically extend the range they can travel from the landing site to perform high-priority science investigations.”
The general-purpose LMV manipulators, Johnson said, will be “able to perform a variety of tasks because of the flexible design of the end effector…in addition to robotic interfaces and tools that can further expand the functionality.” She said that there may be in-situ adaptation as well, as MDA has experience “adapting our robotics on-orbit, through software upgrades and the like, to enable new tasks and capabilities.”
These tasks and capabilities will include scientific work, but not be limited to it. Kirk Shireman, Lockheed Martin’s VP of Lunar Exploration Campaigns, said that while “autonomy will enable these enable these rovers to carry tools and samples,” freeing up crews to do other work, they will also provide a reliable way of transporting the resources needed to sustain a human presence on the Moon.
As seen in previous SpaceQ coverage of in-situ resource utilization, including on SpaceQ’s Space Economy podcast, there are real possibilities for resource extraction on the lunar surface. We may soon see the beginnings of a real lunar economy based on providing materials to lunar habitations and propellants to cislunar space vehicles. The LMV’s may be key to building up that economy. Their role as autonomous vehicles will be especially important; human crew will be too scarce and valuable to ferry resources around—not to mention the safety issues of having humans constantly ferrying resources across the lunar surface—and so a combination of remote operation and AI-based autonomous navigation will be necessary to create lunar supply chains.
According to MDA’s the use of the LMV’s won’t be limited to NASA, but will be available to other “private and space agency astronauts.” Johnson elaborated that they expect that the LMV project will service “international and commercial customers” and “adds to a truly global Artemis program.” The rovers and the MDA manipulators will, she said, “be leveraged in numerous ways by any number of commercial companies,” and serve as “a key enabler for a variety of emerging space applications—not only on the Lunar surface, but also in orbit around the Earth, the Moon, and beyond.”
Johnson said that development is “happening now,” but did not elaborate on its progress, suggesting these are still early days. MDA said they already revealed what using the manipulator could be like, however, at an “interactive digital experience” at the Space Symposium.
The Lockheed Martin led team is competing against at least three other teams at this time. The other three are; Teledyne Brown Engineering leading a that includes Sierra Space and Nissan North America; Northrop Grumman leading a team with AVL, Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Michelin; and Astrolab and the Venturi Group.
Correction: An earlier version of the story said “MDA had already signed a teaming agreement with the two American companies back in 2021.” This was wrong. MDA has just signed on to the team.