Washington: Countries are trying to outdo each other vis-a-vis their plans to explore the Moon.
India last year became the first country to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon’s south pole. Only three other nations — the USA, Russia (former Soviet Union) and China had previously managed to land on the lunar surface.
As plans get bigger and bolder, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has unveiled its mission to run ‘trains’ on Moon!
The Washington-headquartered space organisation has stated its intention to build the first fully-functioning railway station on the Moon to provide reliable, autonomous and efficient payload transport around the lunar surface.
This ‘train’, however, will be different from what humans on Earth are used to.
Dubbed as the Flexible Levitation on a Track (FLOAT), the system will use magnetic levitation over a three-layer flexible film track. These unpowered magnetic robots will levitate over graphite layer and passively float over tracks using diamagnetic levitation.
Unlike lunar robots with wheels, legs or tracks, FLOAT robots won’t have any moving parts and levitate over the track to minimise lunar dust abrasion or wear and tear.
There will be no major construction on site, as these tracks will unroll directly onto the lunar regolith, unlike conventional roads, railways, or cableways.
“FLOAT will operate autonomously in the dusty, inhospitable lunar environment with minimal site preparation, and its network of tracks can be rolled up and reconfigured over time to match evolving lunar base mission requirements,” NASA said.
FLOAT robots will have the capability to transport payloads of different shapes at 0.5 metres per second, while a large-scale FLOAT will be able to move up to 1,00,000 kg of regolith multiple kilometres per day.
“A durable, long-life robotic transport system will be critical to the daily operations of a sustainable lunar base in the 2030’s, as envisioned in the Moon to Mars plan and mission concepts like the Robotic Lunar Surface Operations 2 (RLSO2),” NASA said.
