The next frontier

One of the most expensive limited-production-run vehicles ever built was abandoned, in pristine condition, in 1972. Not locked, not garaged, not even covered – fair game to the first hooligan, vandal or thief to stroll by. Although, to be fair, you don’t get a lot of foot traffic in the Moon’s Taurus-Littrow valley.

Karsten Becker, an electronics engineer from the Berlin-based, trans-global collective Part Time Scientists, wonders how the Apollo 17 Lunar Roving Vehicle has fared over its decades of seclusion. 

“Has it been ripped to shreds by micrometeoroids, or is it still standing there like on the day they left?” he says. Regardless, “this is scientifically a very interesting site for us.”

Becker will know soon enough. Before long, the moon buggy that sits beside the last human foot-prints made on the moon will have its first visitor in over four-and-a-half decades – and it’s a movie star, no less. The Audi lunar quattro, fresh from appearing in Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant, will land less than 3km away.

The collaboration between Audi and the RT Scientists’ 35-strong collective of engineers, physicists, IT experts and assorted boffins was announced in 2015. Their original aim was a tilt at the US$30m Google Lunar XPRIZE, a competition designed to challenge “engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration”. To claim victory, a team must not just land a robot on the moon’s surface, but once there, they must explore at least 500 metres of terrain, transmitting hi-resolution imagery back to the Earth.

NASA’s solution to transporting astronauts between moonwalks was to commission four LRVs, better known as ‘moon buggies’. Tipping the scales at 210kg on Earth – but just 35kg on the moon – the original 4WD Apollo 17 LRV remains a marvel of engineering. With a top speed of about 13km/h NASA shelled out around US$38m, or US$222m in today’s terms, for the quartet it commissioned in 1969. And yet, all but one was abandoned on different parts of the lunar surface, in the same unsentimental manner, when their astronaut drivers headed home (NASA’s fourth buggy, never sent into orbit, suffered the indignity of being scavenged for parts in the Cape Canaveral garage).

Audi’s solution is different, but – Hollywood credentials aside – no less impressive. For a private team, the challenges were literally out of this world. While Audi routinely tests its vehicles in the world’s harshest terrains, the moon – unsurprisingly – offers conditions with no terrestrial equivalent. Moon dust is 1000 times finer than that found in any desert on Earth. The temperature swings are incredible: in direct sunlight, the lunar surface can reach 123°C; plunged into darkness, with no atmosphere to insulate it, the mercury can free fall to –153°C. A 276°C range across a single lunar day. 

The 16-strong team at the Audi Concept Design Studio in Munich were engaged in Audi, and Audi quattro’s, boldest foray yet.

The use of 3D printers to create objects out of powdered plastic is already firmly established. To create a pair of Audi lunar quattros – the Part Time Scientists’ mission will take a pair to the moon – Audi looked to the next phase of design evolution in 3D metal printing. Having already installed some in its Metal 3D Printing Centre for painstakingly slow, painstakingly precise, small-scale production applications, the Audi Concept Design Studio used a laser melting process to craft aluminium parts out of metal powder. The finished Audi lunar quattro is 85 percent printed aluminium; a proportion of the remainder is magnesium.                      

Audi’s experts worked hard to perfect the rover’s intelligent all-wheel-drive power distribution, optimising its high-performance electronics and contributing their piloted driving expertise to the development process. Then, in order to boost stability and increase the traction contact area – maximising quattro grip on that incredibly fine dust – the engineers and designers enlarged the rover and its wheels, at the same time as reducing its weight from the 38kg of earlier prototypes to just 30kg. 

Double wishbone suspension is employed at all four of the wheels, each of which can be rotated over 360 degrees, while the drive system is powered by four wheel-hub motors. Once on the Moon, the Audi lunar quattro will find its way around with four cameras, using them to examine objects as well as to take 3D and 360-degree images. 

“We are proud that we have given the moon rover important aspects of the four rings’ DNA: It is a quattro, has an e-tron battery on board, drives in piloted mode and offers an intelligent mix of materials,” said Michael Schöffmann, Head of Audi Transmission Development and Development Co-ordinator of the Audi lunar quattro.

“The collaboration with the Part-Time scientists is also very enriching for us. We are breaking new technological ground with the Audi lunar quattro and can learn much about how automotive components behave in extreme conditions.”

How they behave – and how they withstand the lunar elements. Even if they’re left in place for, oh, four-and-a-half decades or more, and were built in an analogue era before 3D metal printing.

“The Apollo 17 LRV is of particular interest to us because it wasn’t made from the same high-tech materials NASA used on the lander,” Robert Böhme, the Part Time Scientists’ leader told Popular Science. “It was made using things like piano wire and plastic, so it will be interesting to see how that has all held up. Of course it’s an historic site, so we will be respectful of that, as well.”

While that compulsion to respect lunar history is to be commended, it’s also the only tragedy of the Audi Mission to the Moon. So as not to disturb the Apollo 17 site, the Audi lunar rover will stop 200m away. It’ll then make its observations from a distance using telephoto lenses. 

The Apollo 17 LRV’s lonely vigil may continue, but at least it’ll have a friend in the area – and one that’s infinitely friendlier than some creatures encountered in space.