Venturi Space Shows Off Its Pitch for a New Lunar Lander
Monaco-based Venturi Space has debuted a new design for a next-generation lunar rover that it's calling Mona Luna. It's a pitch that it hopes the European Space Agency (ESA) will pick up during its ministerial conference later this year. It includes a new deformable wheel design and a sleek, futuristic look, with instruments held near the center to protect against harsh moon temperature swings throughout the day/night cycle.
The Venturi Space pitch is that the ESA already has a lunar launch vehicle in the Ariane 6, and a lunar lander in the Argonaut for future payload delivery to the Moon. But what it doesn't have, though, is a lunar rover, and Venturi wants to be the company to provide it, as Space.com reports.
Mona Luna is a next-generation rover design that looks sleek and futuristic, eschewing the gangly, many-limbed rovers we're used to seeing exploring Mars in recent years. That's because the Mona Luna keeps most of its instruments internally to better protect them against the extreme elements and temperature swings that can be experienced on the moon's surface.
In the above concept video, Venturi shows the rover opening its back panel to reveal a number of modular sensors and tools, which the articulating arm can attach and detach to and from at will. That allows a single arm to provide the full functionality of the rover, cutting back on overall costs and weight in the design. It also allows each instrument to have the same level of flexible control.
Another technology Venturi is pioneering for this design is its deformable wheels. These wheels are capable of handling extreme temperature swings from -240 degrees C to 130 degrees C while retaining the same strength and support so that the rover can continue to operate even in the lunar south pole. This hyper-mobile wheel design should also let the rover traverse more demanding surface conditions, letting it travel where previous rovers would be unable to even attempt.
Although the rover's weight is 1650 pounds, with payloads, it could reach as high as 4,400 pounds. The wheels are designed to handle that while still maintaining the ability to reach nine miles per hour or up to 12 miles per hour with lighter payloads.
If Venturi is successful in convincing the ESA to provide some of its budget for a rover contract, it will be able to show proof of its concepts before a potential 2030+ mission. The wheel technologies are being used in the next generation of NASA's own lunar vehicle, the Flex Rover, currently under development at California-based Astrolab. That vehicle is expected to launch for a lunar south pole mission sometime in 2026 or 2027.
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