After more than two years of work, Australian-led consortium ELO2 has won the contract to build and operate our nation’s first lunar rover – which gives us a closer look at the technology headed for the Moon.
The semi-autonomous vehicle, named Roo-ver by the Australian public, will travel to the Moon later this decade in support of NASA’s Artemis program.
The ELO2 consortium building it through the Agency’s $42m investment is co-led by Lunar Outpost Oceania and EPE Oceania. Among the consortium are ten different Australian universities; local space companies like Inovor Technologies, Saber Astronautics, and Element Robotics; and educational outreach organisations such as One Giant Leap Australia.
The lunar rover will collect regolith (lunar soil), and in collaboration with NASA, use this resource in establishing a sustainable human presence on the Moon. Suffice to say, the significance of this mission extends even beyond writing a new page in Australian history.
Back down to business
Despite having already built a working prototype of its rover concept, ELO2 still has plenty more work to do to arrive at the final version ready for the Moon.
In fact, just hours after ELO2 was announced as the contractor to take the Roo-ver concept forward, it began advertising for new recruits to support the process. Its current staff of around 100 is double the size it was last year.
Consortium director Ben Sorensen says his growing team is now refining the design and gearing up for a fresh program of rigorous testing, to ensure Roo-ver rises to the challenges ahead of it.
“The initial competitive phase of the rover’s development focused on de-risking key aspects and feeding lessons learnt into the preliminary design," Ben says.
"Now, as the consortium selected to build Roo-ver, we will see the implementation of the lessons learned, as well as a systematic qualification of the rover.”
"There are a lot of tests in front of us to validate and certify the final design... there will be a myriad of tests designed to prove out each individual subsystem prior to their incorporation within Roo-ver."
~ Ben Sorensen, consortium director
Infrastructure for the job
Alongside the rover design itself, another key element of the mission preparation is the supporting infrastructure involved.
The ELO2 team will rely on carefully designed Australian test equipment and facilities that faithfully simulate the extreme physics of several environments. This includes the vibration of a rocket launch, the vacuum of space, and moving through regolith in low lunar gravity.
Several consortium members around the country will contribute testing facilities to the program – such as the National Space Qualification Network led by the Australian National University, the EXTERRES Laboratory at Adelaide University, and CSIRO.
“The thermal, radiation, and vacuum environment all vary significantly from launch to landing – the rover will have to demonstrate that it can survive both very hot and very cold conditions, with a particular focus on electronics,” Ben says.
“The rover needs carefully designed cooling and heating systems that are well balanced to ensure the rover doesn’t overheat in full sun, and doesn’t drain the battery too fast when in shade.”
“It’s vital that the rover is resistant to the radiation levels seen in transit – particularly ionising radiation during transition across the van Allen belts, and high energy particles on the way to the lunar surface.”
Being a semi-autonomous vehicle, Roo-ver will also depend on infrastructure for remote guidance once it lands on the Moon and it’s ready to roll across the lunar surface.
It will take commands from over 350,000 kilometres away at a mission control centre in Australia, integrated with communications infrastructure in the US and other locations around the world.
“The people controlling the rover will be doing so from right here – Australian operators will be trained to control and monitor the rover throughout the entire mission,” Ben says.
“Operators will control the rover using a mix of discrete manual commands, and by uploading higher-level plans which the rover will execute autonomously.”
Building excitement
The growing public anticipation and broad industry collaboration behind Roo-ver is a reminder of how much it’s elevating Australia’s space sector even before it reaches the Moon.
When Roo-ver is being loaded onto a rocket for launch, Ben believes plenty will have already been proven and achieved from an Australian space capability perspective.
“The journey is just as, if not more, important than the final mission outcomes."
~ Ben Sorensen, consortium director
“Achieving delivery of the rover with NASA’s confidence, even before launch, will demonstrate a major milestone and step up in Australian capabilities as a trusted partner for space exploration missions.”
Meanwhile, Ben and his team have also started making preparations for what will be another enduring legacy of the mission: images of Roo-ver on the Moon.
“We are currently identifying the images that can be provided both from the rover and from the lander looking out to the rover, and how we can best use them – both to ensure mission success, and to show Australia what this mighty little rover can do,” Ben says.
“I dream of that image where Roo-ver has been deployed and is making its tracks across the lunar south pole surface… it’s going to be epic.”
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