Will the Moon exploration take place under the Northrop brand?
Last week, Northrop Grumman (NOC) unveiled the design of a lunar vehicle that is supposed to be during NASA’s Artemis lunar program. The development may become the first production car for space. Although the postponement of the landing date of people on the Moon in November 2021 is planned very soon — in just four years.
The Artemis mission needs a lot of new technologies, as the requirements for safety and commercial efficiency have grown dramatically since the Apollo missions. As a result, the entire Artemis mission will cost about $93 billion by 2025 billion, and one launch will cost more than $4 billion. One of the reasons for the high cost is that there is a task of preparing for the development of the Moon; that is, will test celestial bodies technologies for living and working on the surface of others.
Cars will play an essential role in completing this task. Northrop has introduced its version of the LTV car. It will compete with the project of General Motors Company (GM) and Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMT), about which Ffin.ru I told you earlier. According to the technical task, the machine must withstand strong cooling to -180 degrees Celsius on a moonlit night and work for at least ten years. The proposed Northrop machine will have remote control and a load capacity of 500 kg.
There are no details about it yet, but it will have a radioisotope power source judging by the picture presented. In addition, Northrop’s LTV will initially have remote control capability. Astronauts will be able to control the machine while at the Gateway lunar station, for which Northrop specialists are also building the central habitable module.
The remote mode will simplify the research and construction of the lunar base since it can be performed many works without people on the surface of the Moon. In the future, LTV chassis can be used on Mars and in the development of asteroids. A radioisotope energy source also makes it possible to use the chassis from Northrop for independent research missions. In addition, Northrop uses significant financial resources from the business’s defense segment to create an extensive space development structure.
Northrop is currently assembling a module for the first-ever station beyond Earth orbit, a successfully operating MEV repair satellite, and other related developments. Thus, the company is one of the few public players in the future space exploration market. At the auction on November 19, the Northrop Grumman stock price $353.13.
