U.S. aerospace startup Venturi Astrolab has revealed its new interplanetary rover designed to transport cargo and people across the surface of the moon, and eventually Mars. The company says it plans to build a fleet of these rovers over the coming decade to help NASA and commercial companies establish a long-term presence on the moon. Called FLEX, for Flexible Logistics and Exploration, the rover can crouch down and lift payloads up from the surface of the moon, carrying them under its belly before depositing them at their intended location. With its “modular payload concept,” it can carry many different types of objects, so long as they are built to an agreed-upon standard of size and shape. In keeping with its name FLEX, the rover can maneuver semi-autonomously, be controlled remotely, or it can even be modified to include a crew interface, allowing astronauts to ride on the rover while guiding it through lunar terrain. The goal of FLEX and ultimately Astrolab is to capitalize on the world’s renewed push to send people back to the moon, according to Jaret Matthews, Astrolab’s CEO. “Companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are solving the long haul transportation problem, and we want to solve the local transportation problem and ultimately set the standard for lunar logistics,” said Matthews. Astrolab has already built a full-scale prototype of FLEX, which the company recently test drove out in the California desert near Death Valley, about five hours out from the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne. Former astronaut Chris Hadfield, who’s on Astrolab’s board of advisors, even took the rover for a spin, giving his advice on how the vehicle’s design held up. The company used FLEX to pick up and deliver payloads, as well as set up a vertical solar panel, a critical technology needed for in-space energy that future lunar astronauts will probably need to set up to stay on the moon long-term, Matthew says. Astrolab wants FLEX to be able to carry as much cargo as possible, which is why the company went with the modular design. Matthews likens it to how shipping containers here on Earth are made to specific international standards. He hopes eventually we’ll create a similar standard for cargo on the moon. “You have all those containers kind of move seamlessly through the global supply chain, and that’s a really efficient model where this entire infrastructure is designed to work together,” Matthews says. “So we think that approach makes sense to take forward to the moon and Mars.” Matthews says they learned a lot from their field tests with the FLEX prototype. Ultimately, the prototype is built for Earth terrain, though, so the equipment is much “beefier” than it would be for a lunar environment, which has one-sixth our planet’s gravity. The company says the final rover should weigh about 500 kilograms, and will be built specifically to handle the lunar terrain. “We want the hardware to be super robust so that they can essentially drive it like they stole it and not have to worry about it,” Matthews says. Astrolab claims that FLEX will have insulation and “sufficient internal battery capacity,” allowing the rover to withstand and stay warm between 100 and 300 hours of nighttime at the moon’s south pole. Once the sun rises again, FLEX’s external solar arrays will then start generating electricity from the light. When it’s complete, FLEX will supposedly be able to launch on multiple types of rockets and landers. (SD-Agencies) | 