PARIS — Venturi Space, a company that has partnered with Astrolab on lunar rover concepts, unveiled an all-European rover design it hopes to offer to European space agencies.
The Monaco-based company unveiled the rover concept, called Mona Luna, at an event during the Paris Air Show June 16. The robotic rover, 2.5 meters long and 1.64 meters wide, weighs 750 kilograms.
Mona Luna was designed by Venturi Space as a concept to offer to the European Space Agency and French space agency CNES, along with potential commercial customers, as a larger rover better able to handle the lunar terrain and also survive the lunar night.
“On the moon we have a lot of slopes and loose soil, so you need an ATV,” or all-terrain vehicle, said Antonio Delfino, director of space affairs at Venturi Space, in an interview. “Nobody at the moment is doing an ATV.”
The rover features suspension and steering systems better able to handle lunar terrain, he said, and is designed to travel at up to 20 kilometers per hour. Those systems and other key components are all housed inside the rover, kept as close to the center as possible for better thermal management during the extreme temperature swings between lunar day and night.
The size of the rover is also critical, he added. “In the future, if you want to mine the moon, explore the moon, you need a massive rover,” he said. “When we talk about a massive rover, the technology addressed with it is totally different from the technology for a small rover.”
Mona Luna uses battery and “hyper-deformable” wheel technologies that Venturi is also supplying to Astrolab, an American company that is developing lunar rovers, including for NASA’s Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) program. Delfino noted the technologies used on Mona Luna are entirely European and that there is a “wall” in place to separate work on that rover with Astrolab’s projects. Astrolab, though, displayed models of its rovers in the same exhibit space at the show.
Venturi has received some support from ESA for key technologies needed for the rover. The company is hoping to win support for a rover development project at ESA’s ministerial conference in late November, when member states will decide on funding for agency programs for the next three years.
Delfino argued a rover like Mona Luna fit a gap in Europe’s exploration plans. Mona Lisa is designed to be delivered to the lunar surface on ESA’s Argonaut lander, which would launch on an Ariane 64.
“In Europe at the moment there is no program to explore the moon with a rover,” he said. “There is the Argonaut lander and we have the Ariane 64, but a rover is missing, so we are pushing very hard to convince them this is important.”
One approach to develop the rover could be a public private partnership, similar to what NASA is pursuing with the LTV program where companies will pay a portion of its costs. He said he mentioned this to Josef Aschbacher, ESA director general, and Daniel Neuenschwander, the agency’s director of human and robotic exploration, and got a positive reception. “It will be easier for them to decide to go forward on this.”
He said private companies have shown an interest in the rover as well. “We have some contact with private industry that is interested in Europe,” he said. “And, why not, also outside of Europe.”
