NASA to Demonstrate Moon Rover

coondoggie writes "NASA will this week demonstrate its lunar robot rover equipped with a drill designed to find water and oxygen-rich soil on the moon. NASA said the engineering challenge of building such as drilling system was daunting because a robot rover designed for prospecting within lunar craters has to operate in continual darkness at extremely cold temperatures with little power. The moon has one-sixth the gravity of Earth, so a lightweight rover will have a difficult job resisting drilling forces and remaining stable.The project is just one demonstration of the collaboration NASA is utilizing to bring together its next moon shot. For example, Carnegie Mellon was responsible for the robot's design and testing, and the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology built the drilling system. NASA's Glenn Research Center contributed the rover's power management system. NASA's Ames Research Center built a system that navigates the rover in the dark. The Canadian Space Agency funded a Neptec camera that builds three-dimensional images of terrain using laser light, NASA said."

Standardize?

[Stanistani]

I hope the folks who work on the various rovers get together periodically and exchange ideas -- a standard data bus, a secure common operating system, reuse of algorithms, joint testing of components... could save time, money, and mistakes.

Re:Drilling?

[boris111]

I don't know about extracting H2, and O2, but since Regolith is a pain the ass for the astronauts I'm thinking a rover could be sent to blast away a nice work area for them to arrive and have a regolith free area to set up their moonbase. I'm no rocket scientist though.

Re:Aliens

[Idiomatick]

I know this is just flamebait but ... The lunar landing can be fairly easily proven irrefutably from earth. When they were up there they left behind laser reflecting arrays. What those do is you point a laser at it and it reflects the laser back directly at you. So people with a powerful laser and telescope can pick it up easily enough. As well the americans were in a space race with the russians, HAD the us faked it why would the russians not call them on it? It made them look like crap and they easily had the tech to check. Also lunar rocks if you have taken 1st yr chem are pretty irrefutable.

Sigh...

[sunking2]

The moon has one-sixth the gravity of Earth, so a lightweight rover will have a difficult job resisting drilling forces and remaining stable.

I really tire of all the sensationlism that needs to be tied to everything. Give me a break. This problem has been solved so many times it's not even funnny. How many helicopters which essentially have 0 gravitational force to keep them straight do you see spinning out of control? And that's a complex solution. I think ships anchors are a pretty old tech that's been around a while. How about firing a few pilons into the ground for anchorage. A group of 5th graders can solve this.

Re:sighhhhhh

[mapsjanhere]

Not enough sugar in the coffee this morning? The issues of drilling on the moon are nothing you've ever seen on earth, and none are related to the lower gravity. A few facts (I know, you don't bother with them): Your surface temperature fluctuates from -220 C to + 110 C, with 150 C difference being a good guess for most locations. There are no lubricants that will work over that range, and none that work at -220 C. You have no atmosphere to cool your drill motor, or blow the highly abrasive regolith dust off your seals and bearings. You can't drill using the standard slurry approach to move your debris out of the hole. Your nearest spare parts are 300,000 miles away, and there's no one to loosen that lug nut. You have a very limited power supply from solar cells, and any dust you allow to get on the cells you will not be able to remove. For an easy challenge, try digging a hole in the middle of the Antarctic plateau, middle of winter, with a golf cart full of supplies, and a 5 kW generator for power. Remotely controlled.

Re:Sigh...

[DerekLyons]

The moon has one-sixth the gravity of Earth, so a lightweight rover will have a difficult job resisting drilling forces and remaining stable.

I really tire of all the sensationlism that needs to be tied to everything. Give me a break. This problem has been solved so many times it's not even funnny.

Right - then why don't you provide some solutions that work rather than handwaving nonsense?
 
 

How many helicopters which essentially have 0 gravitational force to keep them straight do you see spinning out of control?

Helicopters provide counter revolution forces in a wide variety of way, precisely none of which will work on the rover.
 
 

I think ships anchors are a pretty old tech that's been around a while. How about firing a few pilons into the ground for anchorage.

For the first, anchors are heavy - and spare weight allowance isn't something the rover has. For the second, how do drive the pitons without encountering the very problems you are driving the pitons to resist?
 
It isn't nearly as simply as you make out.
 
 

A group of 5th graders can solve this.

Everything is easy when all you have to do is handwave. It gets rather harder when you actually have to do it.

Re:Drilling?

[timeOday]

I don't think blast charges oxidize with the atmosphere do they? Doesn't seem like that would mix fast enough. Torpedoes don't seem to have any trouble. As for regolith, "Portable antitank weapons have become more powerful, more reliable, and more available worldwide since the early 1980s. Many of these weapons are capable of penetrating 20 to 40 inches of armor plate steel" (cite [state.nv.us]). For that matter, anything that gets all the way from the earth to the moon is going to arrive with plenty of momentum. Maybe they could just drop a DU rod out of the probe before initiating deceleration for the landing?

Re:Sigh...

[DerekLyons]

It can all be figured out using freshman physics.

Solving it in freshman physics has very little to do with solving it with real world hardware that can built within the constraints of time, mass, volume, budget, reliability, etc...
 
 

Anchors are only heavy because they need to travel 'far' in a decent amount of time. The weight isn't there to help stop the boat, it's there to get to the bottom before you drift away from where you want to be.

ROTFLMAO. You actually believe this?
 
 

I can drive some 6" plastic spikes into the ground for a 10'x10' canopy that will resist a 50mph wind blowing it away. That's a hell of a lot more resistence than my weight would provide.

And how do you drive those spikes from the rover without encountering the recoil/resistance effects the spikes are supposed to anchor you against in the first place?
 
 

Of course it's not this simple, however it's closer to simple than it is some colosal achievment.

As I said, stuff is always simple when you pretend the messy bits of reality can simply be handwaved away.