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NASA chooses Australia as strategic partner to design and build lunar rover for moon-landing

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has chosen Australia as its strategic partner to design and build the Trailblazer lunar rover due to proven expertise in remote operations, developed through resources industry.

The Australian Space Agency has tasked the AROSE consortium with developing the preliminary design of the Trailblazer lunar rover by the middle of 2024.

If successful, the AROSE team – led by Fugro and Nova Systems – will then build, test, deploy and operate the rover on a future moon mission for NASA as part of the Artemis program.

Fugro Space Systems Director, Dawn McIntosh, said that Australia is well positioned to be a world leader in remote operations in space.

“Australia is already the world leader in remote operations for the mining sector,” she said.

“Now we are well positioned to become a leading provider of remote operations technology and expertise for Space.”

AROSE Director of Space Programs, Dr Newton Campbell, said the extreme environmental conditions on the Moon’s surface create specific challenges for the rover design.

“Lunar regolith is pretty nasty stuff,” he said.

“It’s not like digging up normal dirt here on Earth. Since the Moon has no atmospheric or liquid erosion properties it’s much sharper than soil particulates here on Earth. We’re just not used to dealing with that, even with what we deal with in the Pilbara.”

Dr Campbell said there would be a significant amount of advanced tech in the rover design.

“Everything you’re building for Trailblazer is almost entirely new because you have to make these technologies Space-grade,” he said.

“That means they must withstand extreme temperature variations. Not just built for the hot, not just built for the cold, but built to deal with both of those things, with new forms of shielding for example.”

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