Five small robots designed and made in Mexico will take off for the Moon later this year, part of a first-of-its-kind scientific mission in which two-wheeled robots will race across the lunar surface while taking sophisticated measurements.
The so-called nanorobots, developed by researchers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), will work together like a swarm of bees once they make the journey of nearly 386,000 kilometers from Earth aboard a rocket from the American company Astrobotic.
The mission is ready to launch on a United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket and would be the first American spacecraft to land on the Moon in nearly 50 years.
“This is a small mission where we will test the concept and then we will carry out other missions, first to the Moon and then to the asteroids,” said Gustavo Medina Tanco, a UNAM scientist who leads the Colmena project (beehive in Spanish).
Medina Tanco explained that the robots are made of stainless steel, titanium alloys and space aluminum, and are equipped to collect lunar minerals that could be useful in future space mining.
The bots are scheduled to launch in June on Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, originally developed for Google’s Lunar-X-Prize.
In the month-long mission, the nanorobots will take measurements of lunar plasma temperature, electromagnetic measurements and the size of regolith particles, according to a UNAM article on the project published earlier this month.
“We can make a difference in technology and international cooperation that can lead to important joint ventures to study minerals or carry out other scientific explorations,” Tanco said.
