![]() The wheels and tires will be one piece, as with the airless tires used on Earth. Technically, the Lunar Rover won’t have tires in the traditional sense. GM and Lockheed Martin want to make new ones The 1970s moon buggies are still up there. GM and Lockheed Martin are working on a Lunar Rover, pictured in this rendering. Given the longer operational life expected from these new tires - and the fact that it’ll be a very long wait for “roadside assistance” on the moon - Goodyear is exploring new technologies. The partner companies are talking about allowing private firms, organizations, and international agencies, not just NASA, to use them for projects on the moon. And, each sunrise and sunset, temperatures change from extreme hot to extreme cold almost instantly. A moon day and a moon night can be two weeks long, each. This also means the rovers will be exposed to more extreme temperature changes for longer periods. Plans call for them to also operate autonomously so they could be up there driving around and doing things even when people aren’t around. The new Rovers - which are electric, like the originals, since internal combustion engines also wouldn’t work on the airless moon - can be recharged over and over so they can keep working for years. ![]() They were designed to work for a short time then, as planned, they were abandoned. The original Lunar Rovers were, essentially, disposable. The challenges are even greater this time than they were 50 years ago, though. Nevermind the fact that changing a flat tire on the moon wouldn’t be easy in stiff spacesuit gloves. Goodyear's Lunar Rover tires will be made of metal alloys to withstand extreme temperature changes. Second, the moon is bathed in intense radiation that degrades rubber because there is no atmosphere. Air expands and contracts as temperature changes, so keeping an air-filled tire from going flat at night or exploding during the day would be extremely difficult. Tires like the ones we use on Earth - made from rubber and filled with air - won’t work on the moon for a few reasons.įirst, enormous temperature swings from up to 260 degrees Fahrenheit in the daytime down to -280 degrees at night makes an air-filled tire impossible. (GM) (then working with Boeing, instead of Lockheed Martin) and the three lunar rovers they created are still up there sitting on Goodyear Both companies worked on NASA’s original Lunar Roving Vehicles that went to the moon in the early 1970s. (GT) have been over this dry, dusty ground before. ![]() General Motors and Lockheed Martin are working together on a new Lunar Rover. ![]()
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