You might have expected NASA to be the ones to land the first robotic rover from the USA on the moon, but if all goes according to plan, it will be a dedicated group of students and staff from Carnegie Mellon instead.
The Iris rover, which was initially planned to be launched back in 2021, will be carrying out its mission on the 4th of May. Even though NASA did not engineer the robot, it will still be involved in its transport to the moon. The CPLS (Commercial Payload Services) programme is NASA’s way of collaborating with the private sector, and will be responsible for carrying the rover.
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Iris will be transported along with MoonArk, a collaborative sculpture project from the university, which contains compartments with art, poems, photographs and other samples of culture which will be the moon’s first museum. It is intended to convey a message of hope, and to tell a story that will be as moving in 1000 years as it is now. For those curious about its contents, an identical ark is on display at the National Air And Space Museum in Washington, DC. Both projects will be transported by the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket and the Peregrine lunar lander.
Raewyn Duvall, commander of the mission, said: “Hundreds of students have poured thousands of hours into Iris. We’ve worked for years toward this mission, and to have a launch date on the calendar is an exciting step. Iris will open up lunar and space exploration by proving that a tiny, lightweight rover built by students can succeed on the moon.”
The rover will undergo a mission of 60 hours, taking photographs of the moon’s surface, as well as using new localisation methods to communicate its position. It is a small craft, weighing only 2kg and taking up about as much space as a shoebox.
NASA’s own moon rover, VIPER, is scheduled to launch next year. Construction on the craft has begun as of March 2023. After it is built, VIPER will undergo a number of tests including function, performance, and operational tests, as well as vibration, acoustic and thermal-vacuum environmental tests. Their goal of transporting more astronauts to the moon by 2025 is part of long-term plans to establish a number of base camps on the moon’s surface.