The Moon Craft Mission
The rover mission begins the moment the lander touches down on the Moon's surface. After deployment, the rovers will capture various images and videos of the landing site and the lander. After this, each rover will begin its exciting journey on the surface of the Moon. It will travel for 250 meters and record several images and videos of the surroundings and itself. Another 250 meters follow and the process of media capturing is repeated after which the main mission ends.
The X-Prize Foundation also reserves prize money for several bonus objectives. These bonus missions include for example capturing images of a historical artifact on the moon or traveling for at least 5 km on the surface of the Moon.
The layout of the rover has in fact changed several times over the course of the design project. At the bottom of this page, an overview of renders and artist impressions of the rover are listed in chronological order (bottom last).
Rover Mission Concept
The volume requirements opposed by the lander group allowed storage for two rovers. This concept increases reliability significantly. Each rover will be 33 cm in length, 28 cm in width and about 35 cm in height (due to the camera boom). Both rovers will perform the mission simultaneously in different directions.
Rover Locomotion System
Because of the small dimensions of the vehicle, the team decided to develop rigid tracks for means of locomotion. The choice for tracks came from the fact that wheels on small vehicles are very ineffective and are prone to get stuck in loose soil. Each track will be powered by a 2W electro motor and a gearbox with a reduction rate of 590:1.
Rover Optical System
For the optical system, the rovers will probably be using a single high definition (HD) camera. The HD camera data is than processed and compressed on the lander, after which the near real-time images are sent back to earth. The high definition images are sent later, over a longer timespan.
The rovers will however also incorporate two low definition cameras for navigation purposes. The data obtained from these two cameras is continuously streamed through the lander back to the mission control center. These two cameras will be placed at the front side of the vehicles, incorporated into the main body of the crafts. The HD camera however will be placed on a boom, allowing pan and tilt of the camera.
Rover Power System
Both rovers will be using solar cells as a primary energy source and batteries as secondary energy source. The exact type of solar cells as well as the exact type of batteries are still being examined.
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