General Motors is the only automaker that can truly claim to have out of this world cars, because it helped build the Apollo era Lunar Roving Vehicles. It’s about to add a few more to the fleet.
NASA on Tuesday revealed detailed plans for the establishment of a permanent Artemis Moon base and named Astrolab and Lunar Outpost as the companies that were picked to supply vehicles for the operation.
The Lunar Outpost Pegasus is a two-seat lunar terrain vehicle that was developed in partnership with Goodyear, Liedos and General Motors. GM Defense is providing the battery systems for the vehicle, which will ride on metal mesh tires designed by Goodyear and carry an array of Leidos sensors.
NASA’s specifications call for the vehicle to weigh less than 1,000 kg and have a minimum 200 km lifecycle. The chassis is constructed of lightweight metals, including aluminum and titanium, and hinged in the center so that it can be compacted for the trip to the Moon aboard Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 unmanned cargo ships.
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“GM’s electrification technology was built to perform in some of Earth’s toughest driving conditions, and adapting it for the Moon with space-rated batteries is an extraordinary technical challenge,” Stephen duMont, president, GM Defense, said in a news release. “Helping astronauts once again travel safely across the lunar surface will be a proud moment for our team and our country.”
The Pegasus vehicles will be sent to the Moon in early 2028 before the first planned crewed missions land later that year. They will be capable of remote, autonomous and manual control and will be used to survey they area, both above and below the surface.
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Unfortunately for any sports car fans among the Artemis crew, the Pegasus’ quoted top speed is just 10 km/h or 6.2 mph on level ground, which is slower than the Apollo rovers, which were designed to hit 13 km/h or 8.1 mph.
However, In 1972, the late Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan pushed his rover to 18 km/h, or 11.2 mph on a downhill stretch, which remains the lunar land speed record, as he was the last man to step foot and drive on the Moon.
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