Goodyear to develop tires for Lockheed Martin lunar mobility vehicle

The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Corporation, which provided necessary items for NASA’s Apollo program, together with the Apollo 11 mission which landed on the moon 53 a long time ago, will continue that tradition—focusing on lunar car tires—by joining Lockheed Martin in its advancement of a lunar mobility car or truck in partnership with Typical Motors. (Earlier write-up.)

Lunar mobility concept

Considering the fact that Apollo, Goodyear ongoing innovating alongside NASA to progress patterns for a lunar auto tire. The workforce of firms intends to be the very first to build extended-use business motor vehicle operations on the Moon. Goodyear brings its large abilities in a mission-significant component—tires—to traverse the lunar area.

NASA’s Artemis software to are living and get the job done on the Moon has a apparent have to have for lunar surface transportation that we intend to fulfill with vehicles pushed by astronauts or operated autonomously without having crew. We’re producing this new era of lunar mobility motor vehicle to be offered to NASA and for professional companies and even other place agencies to assistance science and human exploration. This method exemplifies NASA’s need for sector to just take the lead with commercial attempts that permit the agency to be a person of many buyers.

—Kirk Shireman, vice president of Lunar Exploration Strategies at Lockheed Martin

Goodyear is drawing from its innovative airless tire know-how employed on Earth with micro-mobility, autonomous shuttles and passenger motor vehicles to progress lunar mobility and endure the hard circumstances on the Moon. The providers are previously making use of existing abilities to the job like testing principles in lunar soil test beds.

Almost everything we discover from making tires for the Moon’s exceptionally complicated running natural environment will assistance us make greater airless tires on Earth. This will contribute to our conclude purpose of enabling mobility no subject where by it normally takes place.

—Chris Helsel, senior vice president, Global Functions and Chief Technology Officer at Goodyear

The Apollo lunar rovers were purposely crafted for just a couple of times of use on excursions in just 5 miles of their landing web-sites. Foreseeable future missions will will need to traverse rugged terrain over a lot more time distances while operating in increased temperature extremes. New tire capabilities will need to be developed for several years of longevity and even survive the night that sees temperatures of under -250 levels Fahrenheit and daytime temps of additional than 250 levels Fahrenheit.

Lockheed Martin is leveraging its a lot more than 50-yr-history of operating with NASA on deep-space human and robotic spacecraft, such as NASA’s Orion exploration-class spaceship for Artemis and several Mars planetary spacecraft. The enterprise will also regulate the growth of the program’s professional company functions and engagement with NASA and world wide area companies. Lockheed Martin has also served NASA investigate every earth of the photo voltaic method, and carries on to acquire new systems for potential house missions.

One more teammate, MDA of Canada, a short while ago declared its business robotic arm know-how will be utilised on the human-rated lunar mobility cars. The arm will give beneficial contributions as assistance for astronauts as very well as enabling increased functionality of the rover on entirely autonomous missions.