Wiggling wheels could keep future rovers trucking in loose lunar soil
A truly all-terrain rover on the moon or Mars may need to put a little wiggle in its walk. Wheeled rovers have trouble crossing the soft soil that covers large swaths of lunar and Martian terrain. NASA’s Spirit rover, for example, met its end after getting stuck in a sand trap on Mars in 2009 (SN: 11/12/09). But a new rover design could spare future robotic explorers that fate. The new rover model can move its four wheels up and down and sweep them back and forth. In lab experiments, a mini plastic version of the rover used combinations of wheel sweeping and spinning to trundle up hills of loose grains that would stop a simple wheeled bot in its tracks, researchers report May 13 in Science Robotics. Future rovers based on this design could scout out slopes of soft lunar soil near the moon’s poles for resources like water ice (SN: 12/16/19) or explore other similar areas. See how a new planetary...