NASA’s Endurance Moon Rover Promises Robotic Breakthroughs

HOUSTON—As much as NASA and its commercial and international partners are striving to advance human exploration of the Moon, NASA is not turning its back on the value of robotic contributions.

Endurance is an autonomous lunar rover concept in development for a landing at the center of the South Pole Aitkin Basin (SPA) on the Moon’s unexplored far side. Once deployed, Endurance would traverse an estimated 2,000 km (1.243 mi.) collecting up to 100 kg (220 lb.) of sample material to be handed off to a NASA Artemis astronaut crew for a return to Earth for scientific analysis. Endurance would traverse throughout the lunar day and night under nuclear power provided by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator.

Development underway at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is in response to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s most recent Planetary Science and Astrobiology survey for 2023-2032. It identified the mission concept as the highest priority for NASA’s Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program.

Previous scientific analysis dates the 1,600-mi. SPA’s impact formation at more than 4 billion years ago and with enough force to eject not only material from the lunar crust but also from the more in-depth mantle. Samples when provided for analysis could provide new insight into conditions on early Earth

The Earth was undergoing similar bombardment, according to James Keane, NASA’s Endurance science lead. He spoke during an Oct. 29 presentation before the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) session underway this week in Houston. But similar materials of scientific value are not available on Earth, with its changing environment.

“SPA is the largest, oldest, deep-impact basin on the Moon,” Keane explained. “It’s the closest, most accessible mega basin in our Solar System. I define a mega basin as something that is an impact basin that is sort of the planet itself. It provides a proof of the deep interior of the Moon and by extension the thermal chemical evolution of rocky worlds.”

With Apollo, NASA managed six crewed lunar landings, primarily in the Moon’s equatorial region, over 3 1/2 years. Astronauts collected and returned 2,196 lunar samples weighing 382 kg (842 lb.). While robotic sample return missions across the Solar System have received a lot of attention, they are for the most part restricted to a single sample collection site.

“One of the challenges of past SPA lunar sample return concepts is that they usually focus on a single site to bring material back, which makes it challenging to address the whole breadth of science you want to do with SPA sample return,” Keane said. “Endurance mitigates this, and the fact you couple it with Artemis and the heavy lift capability of the Human Landing System (HLS) means you can return hopefully a substantial amount of material.”

NASA is currently working with SpaceX and Blue Origin on early Artemis mission HLS concepts. SpaceX’s Starship is in line to transport astronauts between lunar orbit and the Moon’s surface and back to lunar orbit for the Artemis III and IV missions. Those are intended to return astronauts to the Moon to establish a sustainable human presence, starting in late 2026.

NASA is currently looking to 2031 for an Endurance mission launch. The agency is accepting applications for Science Definition Team members. The team is to assess sample collection requirements, including the geological context for the sampling, Keane said. He credited the development of NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission—currently gathering samples of the red planet for a planned return to Earth—with helping set the stage for Endurance.

A subscale model of Endurance is undergoing evaluation at a JPL test facility used to set the stage for NASA’s Mars Spirit and Opportunity Mars rover missions, which launched in mid-2003 and landed successfully in January 2004 for long-duration missions.

“One of the biggest challenges for Endurance is autonomous driving,” Keane stressed. “The rover needs to be able to drive day and night on the far side of the Moon. So you cannot joystick this thing from Earth. To do this, you need to drive autonomously, and with the Mars rovers and in particular Perseverance, we have gotten pretty close.”