Venturi Astrolab, known for developing vehicles for lunar missions, has unveiled the FLIP lunar rover. It is small in size, and engineers expect to send it to the Moon on a mission in the near future.
Venturi Astrolab’s new lunar rover
On October 15 at the International Astronautical Congress, specialists from Venturi Astrolab presented the FLIP rover to the public. This vehicle has four wheels and weighs about half a ton. It can carry 50-70 kg of payload.
Venturi Astrolab are generally known as the developers of the FLEX vehicle. It is intended to be used by astronauts on the surface of the Moon during expeditions under the Artemis program and to carry up to 1,500 kg of payload. However, when it will be given the opportunity to perform to the best of its ability is still unknown.
The Venturi Astrolab team plans to use FLIP as a demonstrator of all the technologies they’ve designed into FLEX. After all, the wheel design, batteries, propulsion and communication systems used on it are similar to those that will be used on the FLEX. The company generally constructed the sample for ground testing, but later decided to turn it into a full-fledged rover.
When FLIP heads to the Moon
On the Moon, FLIP is not only expected to demonstrate that all the technology Venturi Astrolab has created actually works. It should also interest companies and scientific institutions that don’t need a large payload to use it themselves.
Venturi Astrolab expects to send it to the Moon with one of the smaller private missions before 2025 as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) partnership program. They are especially counting on Astrobotic Technologies’ Griffin mission.
NASA had booked one of their launches for it as part of the same CLPS program long ago. It was to deliver the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) to the Moon. However, its development was canceled, athough no one revoked plans to launch Griffin. And FLIP may indeed become the best payload replacement for the mission.
According to spacenews.com
