Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) students will be the first to deploy America's lunar rover all the way to the moon by May. This will come a year earlier than NASA's Artemis II.
Iris: Student-developed Lunar Rover
This comes after more than six decades of lunar exploration. Live Science also notes that this autonomous rover will be the first sent by the US all the way to the moon.
What's more, NASA engineers and astronomers did not work on this launch. The rover is the brainchild of dedicated college students from CMU.
The Iris rover was made by students, alumni, and faculty from CMU in Pennsylvania over three years. The rover will be deployed to the moon as part of the CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) program of NASA.
The rover was initially meant to launch by late 2021 or early 2022. However, setbacks pertaining to NASA's agenda on the moon led to the Iris' delayed launch schedule.
Aside from being the first lunar rover in America, the Iris is also the first rover that was developed by college students. The chassis of the rover has the size of a shoebox, while its wheels made of carbon fiber have the same size as bottle caps. The Iris rover weighs roughly 2.2 kilograms.
The rover's mission will run for 60 hours. The nature of the mission will primarily be visual. Live Science notes that it will be capturing moon snaps for further study. The rover will also examine novel localization methodologies as it will relay data to earth.
The Iris will be controlled and monitored by students from the university's Mission Control at the Pittsburgh campus. Shifts will be adapted in order to maintain consistent contact with the rover.
For the last weeks, the students have done simulations of missions in order to familiarize themselves with the controls and tasks.
Raevyn Duvall, the mission's commander and a research associate from the CMU, says that hundreds of students have poured thousands of hours into the rover. Duvall notes that given the years of work, it is an exciting step for them to have a launch date for the Iris.
MoonArk
On top of this, the team also plans to deploy the MoonArk, which is a small time capsule containing music, poems, pictures, and other tiny objects. According to the CMU's statement, the MoonArk will be the "first museum on the moon."
As a whole, these items showcase intricate stories that integrate science, arts, technologies, and the humanities. The art collection represents the efforts of 18 different organizations and universities, 60 team members, and over 250 contributing designers, artists, engineers, scientists, educators, poets, choreographers, musicians, and writers.
The MoonArk and the Iris will board the United Launch Alliance (ULA) for the moon. At present, the deployment is set for May 4, which was interestingly dubbed "International Star Wars Day." The ULA will launch from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
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