Concordia University
Reduced Gravity Flights to Study Granular Scaling Laws for Lunar Rovers — The terrains of the Moon and Mars consist of fine granular regolith with embedded rocks. During the Apollo 15 mission, the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle  became stuck in such soil, and had to be freed manually by astronauts. Mars rovers have also suffered mobility challenges including entrapment in soft soil. There had been very limited experimental mobility data collected in reduced gravity to study this problem. Understanding the nature of interactions with granular terrains is thus crucial to exploring these high priority destinations.

The purpose of this project is to study Lunar rover mobility on regolith (loose soil) in reduced gravity. The main objectives are developing guidelines for using on-Earth testing in 1-g, along with modeling and simulation, to predict mobility performance in the Lunar environment.

All aspects of this research, from the reduced-gravity testing to the validation of on-Earth testing and models, position Canada at the cutting-edge of planetary rover resear