Image via Toyota
Toyota, the company which has blessed us with the legendary Land Cruiser line, has decided off-roading on Earth isn’t enough. The automaker is teaming up with NASA to provide the Lunar Cruiser, a pressurized rig made for exploring the Moon.
Exotically dangerous: overlanding through Honduras.
Concepts we’ve seen portray the Lunar Cruiser as a rather large, six-wheeled vehicle with some interesting features. While the design isn’t super inspiring, we assume it’s optimal for the lunar environment and thus form follows function.
We expect the final product to be a little different than the digital concepts we’ve seen so far. With a deadline of 2031 to have a working product, Toyota is working in conjunction with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
Powered by batteries which generate hydrogen, the Lunar Cruiser isn’t going to be traversing the entire moon surface in no time. It’s supposed to go about 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) each day. However, the goal is to make the Lunar Cruiser good to operate for a decade, which we imagine isn’t easy considering conditions on the Moon.
Since the interior is pressurized, astronauts can ride around on the moon while not wearing space suits, just like they do in spacecraft. Only two will be riding in it at a time.
Interest in Toyota’s Lunar Cruiser has intensified after it was recently revealed Japan and the US will be cooperating on future manned missions to the Moon under the Artemis project. This comes as China and other nations have also set their sights on lunar exploration and possible colonization.
All this might sound like pure science fiction, and for now it essentially is. But what constitutes a dream now might one day become reality. Vehicles like the Toyota Lunar Cruiser could be key in transporting space explorers not on the surface of the Moon but also Mars and any number of other celestial bodies.
Images via Toyota
