Early last year it was announced that GM will work with NASA to develop its next-generation Moon Rover, which could resemble the GMC Hummer EV. Last week GM said it is progressing with these plans, along with a virtual lunar surface environment for testing.
GM has always been interested in space. In the 1960s, it partnered with Boeing to build three lunar roving vehicles (LRVs) that were used in missions in 1970 and 1971. These rovers are still on the moon to this day.
Stuart Fowle, GM spokesperson, says that the company wants to build on this, by developing a new vehicle by 2025.
With the Hummer EV as a launching point, the rovers will use the Ultium vehicle platform and batteries. As there are no roads on the moon (yet), GM has had to create an expensive simulator to test the rovers, and the company has already made some important discoveries about how the vehicles will be able to roam the surface of the moon.
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"We’ve created a kilometre by kilometre surface of the moon and we can drive around on that free-form," says a GM spokesperson. "Things that you would do to make a vehicle good in an off-road environment on Earth are the same things you would do on the moon. It’s just a shift in the numbers."
Jeff Vogt, GM advanced vehicle dynamics lead engineer, says: “We started with the Hummer EV's chassis tuning as a baseline, and on the virtual moon the suspension didn’t even move. So, we knew immediately that we’d have to soften everything up.”
“And we learned pretty quickly that if you accelerate too hard to climb an incline, with lower gravity, you launch into space. Between that and dust mitigation, we know control systems will be vital to success,” he continued.
Moondust will be a big obstacle to overcome, as it spreads easily and absorbs the heat of the sun. It has the potential to damage not just the rover, but the spacesuits of its passengers too. During Apollo 15, moondust became a major issue when one of the fenders was ripped from the rover.
It caused a massive spray of dust, causing the astronauts to construct a makeshift fender out of paper geological maps, duct tape, and two clamps from the optical alignment telescope. Precautions need to be taken with the new rovers to avoid something like this happening again.
The new rover is designed to last at least a decade on the moon, and it'll have a top speed of 19km/h.