NASA Challenge Tests Wheel Designs for Moon Base Mobility

As NASA prepares to establish the Moon Base, advancing surface mobility will be key to helping crews and robotic systems travel farther across the lunar surface. To help advance that capability, the Rock and Roll with NASA Challenge invited public innovators to design and build next-generation lunar rover wheels. Five teams from 128 submissions and 49 countr

The top 3

  1. Apollo LRV's Flexible Wire Mesh Wheels: The Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) used on Apollo missions 15, 16, and 17 featured four large, flexible wire mesh wheels with stiff inner frames and thin titanium tread strips to enhance flotation and traction on soft lunar soil.
  2. Soviet Lunokhod's Rigid Wire Mesh Wheels: The Soviet Lunokhod rovers (Luna 17 and Luna 21 missions) utilized eight rigid rim wire mesh wheels with bicycle-type spokes and metal cleats for traction, being the first robotic wheeled vehicles to traverse the Moon's surface.
  3. Mars Curiosity/Perseverance Aluminum Wheels: NASA's Mars rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance, employ wheels machined from solid aluminum blocks with cleats (grousers) for traction and curved titanium spokes for springy support, designed to endure diverse Martian terrain. Perseverance's wheels are narrower, larger in diameter, and thicker than Curiosity's, with twice as many treads to improve durability.

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