As NASA’s Artemis II mission unfolds, with four astronauts on the first crewed lunar voyage since 1972’s Apollo 17, the U.S.’s elite status as the only nation to ever send humans to the moon remains a point of patriotic pride. Yet in at least one aspect of lunar exploration, the U.S. is a surprising underachiever: it has never successfully deployed and operated a robotic rover on the moon.
That could change this year.
The Soviet Union took pole position in the lunar rover race in 1970 with its Lunokhod 1 mission, the first of two successful Soviet rovers. More recently, China’s ambitious space program has sent two rovers, one of which, Yutu-2, became the first human-made rover to operate on the lunar far side—where it is still working today. India and Japan are members of the lunar rover club, too.
Under the auspices of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, last year one company came close to finally putting the U.S. on the board. Lunar Outpost’s MAPP (Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform) rover reached the lunar surface alive and well within a lander built and operated by aerospace firm Intuitive Machines. But, alas, the mothership had landed askew, trapping MAPP inside. (Other mobile robotic payloads onboard—including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology–built AstroAnt, as well as Intuitive Machines’ surface-hopping Micro Nova craft—suffered the same fate.)\
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