What is LUVMI-X?
LUVMI-X is a lightweight lunar rover bound for the polar regions of the Moon. Its mission? To search for water and other volatiles, scoping out the lunar environment in support of the establishment of a lunar economy and of future human missions to the Moon and beyond.
How did we get here?
LUVMI-X is the next phase of the LUVMI concept, which developed mobile instrumentation to analyse traces of volatiles in regions of the Moon in perpetual darkness. A mobile system comprising state of the art instruments and a robotic platform was designed, and a prototype was built and tested successfully.
Building on the success of its predecessor, LUVMI-X focuses on the design of a mobile platform with standardised instrument interfaces, featuring cutting-edge payloads able to feature cutting-edge instruments able to analyse volatiles remotely, and others that measure radiation. The rover will have room for custom instruments that other scientists may wish to send to the Moon in the near future.
Where are we headed?
The core ambition of LUVMI-X is to deepen our understanding of lunar resources. The project seeks to facilitate the study of the potential effects of the lunar environment on human health, such as dust and radiation. It will also collect measurements for in situ resource utilisation studies and develop an architecture for technologies vital to sustaining a human presence on the Moon, such as power generation.
