30 jun 2026
NASA may send a backup, nuclear-powered Mars rover to the Moon
NASA officials said Tuesday that they are seriously considering sending the full-scale engineering model of the Perseverance rover, which is currently housed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, to the Moon to expedite their efforts to explore the south pole region. The car-sized rover nicknamed "Promise," which serves as a testbed for Perseverance and was not otherwise planned for a launch, would land equipped with a multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG) to power it across difficult terrain and through the lunar night.
across the coverage
NASA provided an Artemis update today (June 30), announcing new lunar landing contracts for its Moon Base initiative and a surprise new possible rover mission that could be headed to the moon's south pole. During the second monthly update that NASA has provided for its moon base plans , the agency named Astrobotic, Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines as the providers of four robotic landers that will deliver scientific payloads to the surface of the moon , as NASA tests and expands the technologies needed for a permanent human outpost.
space.com
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- 21:25space.com
'PROMISE' me the moon? NASA wants to send spare nuclear-powered Mars rover to the lunar surface
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