With NASA heading back to the moon with its Artemis campaign, the space agency is developing an army of autonomous lunar robots to make it happen.
NASA's CADRE rovers, short for Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration, are four-wheeled explorers powered by solar panels. About the size of a carry-on bag, these largely autonomous robots will map the lunar surface and use radar to detect what's beneath the top layer of moon dust, also called lunar regolith.
The rovers will be able to communicate with one another via a radio system and transmit data back to their lunar lander. A trio of CADRE rovers will launch aboard a commercial spacecraft later this year.
Once lunar resources are identified, NASA's IPEx (short for In-Situ Resource Utilization Pilot Excavator) can come to dig them up. This mini bulldozer-dump truck hybrid has hollow drums on each side, which spin in opposite directions. Openings on the drums capture and contain lunar regolith. This regolith can be a source of valuable oxygen, hydrogen and the essential combination of both: water.
Being able to extract these life-sustaining resources from the lunar environment may help humans live and work on the moon for longer periods of time. Perhaps someday, lunar resources will help turn the moon into a jumping off point for exploring worlds beyond.
To see these mini lunar laborers in action, check out the video in this article.