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NASA’s Mini Rover Team Is Packed for Lunar Journey

✇NASA
By:Anthony Greicius

4 min read

Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)

A team at JPL packed up three small Moon rovers, delivering them in February to the facility where they’ll be attached to a commercial lunar lander in preparation for launch. The rovers are part of a project called CADRE that could pave the way for potential future multirobot missions. NASA/JPL-Caltech

A trio of suitcase-size rovers and their base station have been carefully wrapped up and shipped off to join the lander that will deliver them to the Moon’s surface.

Three small NASA rovers that will explore the lunar surface as a team have been packed up and shipped from the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, marking completion of the first leg of the robots’ journey to the Moon.

The rovers are part of a technology demonstration called CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration), which aims to show that a group of robots can collaborate to gather data without receiving direct commands from mission controllers on Earth. They’ll use their cameras and ground-penetrating radars to send back imagery of the lunar surface and subsurface while testing out the novel software that enables them to work together autonomously.

The CADRE rovers will launch to the Moon aboard IM-3, Intuitive Machines’ third lunar delivery, which has a mission window that extends into early 2026, as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative. Once installed on Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander, they’ll head to the Reiner Gamma region on the western edge of the Moon’s near side, where the solar-powered, suitcase-size rovers will spend the daylight hours of a lunar day (the equivalent of about 14 days on Earth) carrying out experiments. The success of CADRE could pave the way for potential future missions with teams of autonomous robots supporting astronauts and spreading out to take simultaneous, distributed scientific measurements.

Members of a JPL team working on NASA’s CADRE
Members of a JPL team working on NASA’s CADRE technology demonstration use temporary red handles to move one of the project’s small Moon rovers to prepare it for transport to Intuitive Machines’ Houston facility, where it will be attached to the company’s third lunar lander.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Construction of the CADRE hardware — along with a battery of rigorous tests to prove readiness for the journey through space — was completed in February 2024.

To get prepared for shipment to Intuitive Machines’ Houston facility, each rover was attached to its deployer system, which will lower it via tether from the lander onto the dusty lunar surface. Engineers flipped each rover-deployer pair over and attached it to an aluminum plate for safe transit. The rovers were then sealed in protective metal-frame enclosures that were fitted snuggly into metal shipping containers and loaded onto a truck. The hardware arrived safely on Sunday, Feb. 9.

“Our small team worked incredibly hard constructing these robots and putting them to the test, and we have been eagerly waiting for the moment where we finally see them on their way,” said Coleman Richdale, the team’s assembly, test, and launch operations lead at JPL. “We are all genuinely thrilled to be taking this next step in our journey to the Moon, and we can’t wait to see the lunar surface through CADRE’s eyes.”

The rovers, the base station, and a camera system that will monitor CADRE experiments on the Moon will be integrated with the lander — as will several other NASA payloads — in preparation for the launch of the IM-3 mission.

More About CADRE

A division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL manages CADRE for the Game Changing Development program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. The technology demonstration was selected under the agency’s Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative, which was established to expedite the development of technologies for sustained presence on the lunar surface. NASA’s Science Mission Directorate manages the CLPS initiative. The agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and its Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, both supported the project. Motiv Space Systems designed and built key hardware elements at the company’s Pasadena facility. Clemson University in South Carolina contributed research in support of the project.

For more about CADRE, go to:

https://go.nasa.gov/cadre

News Media Contact

Melissa Pamer
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-314-4928
melissa.pamer@jpl.nasa.gov

2025-018

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NASA Space Tech’s Favorite Place to Travel in 2025: The Moon!

✇Artemis – NASA
By:Stefanie Payne
4 Min Read

NASA Space Tech’s Favorite Place to Travel in 2025: The Moon!

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 1 spacecraft in the darkness of space captures a first image from the top deck of its lunar lander.
The first image from space of Firefly's Blue Ghost mission 1 lunar lander as it begins its 45-day transit period to the Moon.
Credits: Firefly Aerospace

NASA Space Technology has big travel plans for 2025, starting with a trip to the near side of the Moon!

Among ten groundbreaking NASA science and technology demonstrations, two technologies are on a ride to survey lunar regolith – also known as “Moon dust” – to better understand surface interactions with incoming lander spacecraft and payloads conducting experiments on the surface. These dust demonstrations and the data they’re designed to collect will help support future lunar missions.  

Blue Ghost Mission 1 launched at 1:11 a.m. EST aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The company is targeting a lunar landing on Sunday, March 2. 

The first image from space of Firefly’s Blue Ghost mission 1 lunar lander as it begins its 45-day transit period to the Moon. The top deck of the lander is visible here with the X-band antenna and NASA’s Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) payload.
The first image from space of Firefly’s Blue Ghost mission 1 lunar lander as it begins its 45-day transit period to the Moon.
Firefly Aerospace

NASA Space Technology on Blue Ghost Mission 1

NASA’s Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) will lift, transport, and remove particles using electric fields to repel and prevent hazardous lunar dust accumulation on surfaces. The agency’s Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) technology will use stereo imaging to capture the impact of rocket plumes on lunar regolith as the lander descends to the Moon’s surface, returning high-resolution images that will help in creating models to predict regolith erosion – an important task as bigger, heavier payloads are delivered to the Moon in close proximity to each other. 

The EDS and SCALPSS technologies will be delivered to the Moon on Firefly’s first Blue Ghost mission, named Ghost Riders in the Sky, as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative. Its landing target is a 300-mile-wide basin located on the Moon’s near side, called Mare Crisium – a large, dark, basaltic plain that filled an ancient asteroid impact. First-of-their-kind experiments will deploy after landing to gather important data in a broad spectrum of areas including geophysical characteristics, global navigation, radiation tolerant computing, and the behavior of lunar regolith.

Replicating the Moon’s harsh environment on Earth is a significant challenge because of extreme temperatures, low gravity, radiation, and dusty surface. The CLPS initiative provides unprecedented access to the lunar surface, allowing us to demonstrate technologies in the exact conditions they were designed for. Missions like Blue Ghost Mission 1 are a true game changer for NASA technology advancement and demonstration.”

Michael Johansen

Michael Johansen

Flight Demonstrations Lead for NASA’s Game Changing Development program

Dust particles scatter during an experiment for the Electrodynamic Dust Shield for Dust Mitigation.
Dust particles scatter during an experiment for the Electrodynamic Dust Shield in a laboratory at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA
lunar surface camera technology integrated on a lunar lander
NASA’s Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies technology integrated on Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander.
Firefly Aerospace
A complex wrinkle ridge in Mare Crisium at low Sun, seen in an image captured by the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter Camera (illumination is from the right). Image width is 700 m, north is up. Boulders occupy the tops of mounds on the west ridge, and the central depression is more heavily cratered than the ridge.
A complex wrinkle ridge in Mare Crisium at low Sun, seen in an image captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera.
NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

Understanding regolith

The Moon’s dusty environment was one of the greatest challenges astronauts faced during Apollo Moon missions, posing hazards to lunar surface systems, space suits, habitats, and instrumentation. What was learned from those early missions – and from thousands of experiments conducted on Earth and in space since – is that successful surface missions require the ability to eliminate dust from all kinds of systems. Lunar landings, for example, cause lunar dust to disperse in all directions and collect on everything that lands there with it. This is one of the reasons such technologies are important to understand. The SCALPSS technology will study the dispersion of lunar dust, while EDS will demonstrate a solution to mitigate it. 

Getting this new data on lunar regolith with be pivotal for our understanding of the lunar surface. We’ve long known that lunar dust is a huge challenge. The Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative has enabled us to initiate lunar dust mitigation efforts across the agency, working with industry and international partners. The lunar science, exploration, and technology communities are eager to have new quantitative data, and to prove laboratory experiments and develop technology solutions.”

Kristen John

Kristen John

Technical Integration Lead for NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative (LSII)

[VIDEO] Dust on the lunar surface is a significant hazard for systems and astronauts living and working on the Moon. NASA space technologies are developing solutions to retire hurdles in this capability area.
NASA Space Technology

Dust mitigation technology has come a long way, but we still have a lot to learn to develop surface systems and infrastructure for more complex missions. LSII is actively engaged in this effort, working with the lunar community across sectors to expand knowledge and design new approaches for future technologies. Working alongside the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium, LSII has a unique opportunity to take a holistic look at dust’s role in the development of surface infrastructure with other key capability areas including in-situ resource utilization, surface power, and surviving the lunar night.  

Learning from the the Moon benefits Mars science and exploration

Capabilities for minimizing dust interaction are as important for future missions on Mars as it is for missions on the Moon. Like the Moon, Mars is also covered with regolith, also called Martian dust or Martian soil, but the properties are different than lunar regolith, both in shape and mineralogy. The challenges Mars rovers have encountered with Martian regolith have provided great insight into the challenges we will face during lunar surface missions. Learning is interwoven and beneficial to future missions whether hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth, on the Moon, or millions, on Mars.  

Black and white image of an astronaut sampling lunar dust on the surface of the Moon during the Apollo 17 mission.
Scientist-astronaut Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17 lunar module pilot, uses an adjustable sampling scoop to retrieve lunar samples during the second Apollo 17 extravehicular activity (EVA).
NASA
Imprints in Mars dust from a rover's robotic arm
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover snagged two samples of regolith – broken rock and dust – on Dec. 2 and 6, 2022. This set of images, taken by the rover’s left navigation camera, shows Perseverance’s robotic arm over the two holes left after the samples were collected.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Learn more from a planetary scientist about how science factors into lunar dust mitigation technologies:

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