Secret Soviet Lunar Rovers and Extra Terrestrial Cars - Lunokhod, Mars Rovers

For the last 50 years or so we've been using wheeled robots and vehicles to explore other worlds from secret soviet lunar Rovers for the first lunar car to the latest mars rovers we owe a lot to our extraterrestrial will helpers. NASA recently released new concept art for the Mars 2020 Rover the robotic lab shown in action in its potential landing sites on Mars currently three locations being considered and a final decision will be made in 2018/19. If these images look somewhat familiar to ones you've seen before it's because the new rover is the same core design as curiosity the Mars Science Laboratory which has been exploring the red planet since 2012. Both Rovers are developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and are about the size and weight of a Mini Cooper these are both big heavy Rovers. Curiosity and the 2020 Rover followed decades of mobile robots and cars landing on foreign worlds some of these are still in action. Everyday NASA sends instructions to curiosity to do new science on Mars and the 2004 robot opportunity is still roaming around Mars after 13 years. To date opportunity has traveled further on the surface of Mars with any other robot, a total of 43 kilometres of 27 miles , not a lot granted but then it only has got a top speed of 180 meters per hour 196 yards but normally travels at about 20% of that speed around 36 meters or 39 yards per hour however the second place of the distance rankings goes to one of the first extra-terrestrial Rovers, Lunokhod 2 The Soviet Lunokhod whose name means "Moon Walker" was a fully automated Explorer built in secret by the Soviets to compete with NASA's manned Apollo programs. The chief designer assigned to the project was the tank designer Alexandre Kemurdzhain who had previously worked on heavy tracked vehicles and hovercraft and had a reputation for creating innovative and capable vehicles gathering a team of his former colleagues to work with him Kemurdzhain's first prototypes for the moon rover used tracks like a tank, however in testing these designs got stuck in difficult trade more often than Rovers with free moving wheels. Switching to a new design with eight independently powered wheels Kemurdzhain's prototype could keep moving even if all but three got stuck, a level of redundancy that would be essential for an extended exploration where there was no chance of recovery if anything went wrong. Kemurdzhain's team knew that survival through the extreme temperatures on the moon was going to require some extreme engineering. To deal with this Lunokhod had a lid or "frying pan" as it was known that opened up to uncover the solar panels these would charge the rover during the lunar day and then close to protect the electronics from the harsh cold of the lunar night where the temperatures could drop as low as minus 173 degrees centigrade of - 279 Fahrenheit. With the lid closed the Lunokhod used a polonium-210 radioisotope heater to warm its electronics until sunrise 14 Earth days later. On February the 19th 1969 the first Lunokhod was loaded onto the Proton rocket ready to launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. There was still a chance for the Soviets to score a victory in the space race against the Americans. Two months earlier Apollo 8 had flown astronauts Borman, Lovell and Anders around the moon but Apollo 11 was still six months away if the Lunokhod worked the Soviets would be the first to move freely across the lunar surface with their fully automated Rover. However a few seconds after the launch the Proton rocket exploded spreading the Lunokhod and its polonium-210 heat source through the Russian atmosphere. Because the program was secret and Soviets didn't publicize their failures the rest of the world wouldn't know about the would be the first moon rover until years later when Soviet documents would be declassified. Ultimately it would be 16 months after Neil Armstrong's first historic steps on the moon by the time Kemurdzhain's team finished another Rover which in typical Soviet star adopted the name Lunokhod 1, effectively airbrushing the first failure from the Soviet space history. Seven days after launch the Luna 17 Lander touched down in the northwest edge of a mare Imbrium or sea of rains then responding to commands from earth the pioneering Rover rolled down the Landers ramps to make the first wheeled tracks on the Moon Lunokhod 1 successfully operated for ten months taking more than 20,000 photographs and conducting 500 Soil tests over six and a half miles or 10 and a half kilometers. In 1973 Lunokhod 2 went even further exploring 59 kilometers or 24 miles of the moon in just five months by the time Lunokhod 2 completed its exploration NASA had proven it's own very different solution for traveling on the moon's surface. The lunar roving vehicle (LRV) first used on the Apollo 15 mission was a lightweight "dune buggy" style car weighing 210 kilograms on earth or just 35 kilograms in the moon's low gravity but during the planning stages that iconic dune buggie appearance of the LRV was far from assured. Early concepts tried out giant 12-foot wheels even a corkscrew propulsion system to deal with the possibility of a quicksand like lunar surface. it was only in 1966 when NASA's surveyor 1 robotic Lander confirmed but the moon's surface was indeed able to support a heavy probe that the set of compact wheels were chosen. In development several Rover concepts were considered including a mobile pressurized cabin providing a base of operations to support exploration of the lunar surface for up to 2 weeks the four tonne MOLAB or mobile lab would be launched on a Saturn V rocket with the crew following on in a second Saturn V soon after. However as budget restrictions allowed for only one Saturn launch per follow mission the MOLAB concept was abandoned in favour of a lighter vehicle. General motors were subcontracted to make the wheels and the drivetrain for the four Rovers which were then assembled by Boeing, one LRV was made for each of the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 mission and an additional rover was used for spare parts after the program's cancellation. as with the Lunokhod designed the LRV was engineered for multiple redundancies. The rule was that no single point of failure shall have abort the mission and no second failure shall endanger of a crew. The rover's performed well and also doubled up as a mobile remote control camera platform to record the crews departure from the moon. In all they traveled a combined distance of 59 miles or 95 kilometers across the three missions. On the final Apollo excursion astronaut Gene Cernan reached 11.2 miles per hour or 18 km/h on the taurus littrow valley setting an unofficial lunar land speed record which still stands to this day. Unlike the manned moon missions the first astronauts on Mars in the 2030s will have at least 18 months to explore their environment before returning to Earth, a mission of this duration makes it possible to explore a much large area and demands a much more capable extraterrestrial car. One of the candidates for the job is NASA's Mars space exploration vehicle or SEV which follows on from the development of the MOLAB in the 1960s. Like the MOLAB the SEV is much heavier than any existing Rover. Weighing in at 6600 pounds or almost three metric tonnes with this extra weight however comes a range of new capabilities the SEV can explore up to 125 miles or 200 kilometers in a single excursion, with of a top speed of 12 miles now or 19 kilometers per hour. The vehicle can also carry a payload of one ton of samples for supplies. Inside the cabin the two crew seats can recline into the bed and a small bathroom of a showerhead that produce a mist or water for bathing. Variants of the SEV also include a spacecraft version which could visit asteroids called the MMSEV and an alternate version with enough propulsion to land on the moon riding into space on the new upcoming SLS Launch System the SEV could be doing science for the earth moon system by the mid-2020s. Perhaps astronauts in these vehicles will discover the first signs of life beyond our world between the long shadows of the Rovers that went before. So thanks for watching and don't forget we also have the curious droid Facebook page and group where you can suggest ideas for new videos the link is in the channel page and you can also translate any other videos with the community contributions which we've have the video on if you're unsure do it in the uploaded video section so as always thanks again for watching and please subscribe rate and share.

Channel: Curious Droid

Views: 316,615

Rating: 4.9276624 out of 5

Keywords: mars rover 2020, nasa, space, curiosity rover, opportunity rover, lunokhod 1, lunokhod 2, molab, mars rover, lunar rover, Alexandre Kemurdzhain, apollo 15, apollo 16, apollo 17, gene cernan, Lunar Roving Vehicle, lrv, boeing, GM, Mare Imbrium, lunar, moon, rovers, secret, coverup, landing, curious-droid.com, curious droid, apollo, mars, andy munzer, Extra Terrestrial Cars, Secret Soviet Lunar Rovers, sev, paul shillito

Id: kNGS1LFzw-I

Length: 9min 44sec (584 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 10 2017