NASA Announces Plans To Build First Railway System On Moon
NDTV
The transport system will be critical to the daily operation of a sustainable lunar base in the 2030s, NASA said in a statement.
As the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) readies to return astronauts to the moon, it has announced its plans to build a levitating robot train on the lunar surface. In a blog post, the American space agency provided details about the project called "Flexible Levitation on a Track (FLOAT)", which aims to provide a "robotic transport system" to support future lunar activities of astroinauts visiting the moon. The transport system will be critical to the daily operation of a sustainable lunar base in the 2030s, NASA said in a statement.
"We want to build the first lunar railway system, which will provide reliable, autonomous, and efficient payload transport on the Moon," robotics expert Ethan Schaler of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said. "A durable, long-life robotic transport system will be critical to the daily operations of a sustainable lunar base in the 2030s," he added.
According to NASA's initial design, FLOAT will be for machines only. It will consist of magnetic robots levitating over a three-layer film track to reduce abrasion from dust on the lunar surface. Carts will be mounted on these robots and will move at roughly 1.61 kilometres per hour. They could transport roughly 100 tons of material a day to and from NASA's future lunar base.
