In a special chamber at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, engineers prepare to test a small rover that will go to the Moon as part of a NASA technology demonstration called CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration). The project is designed to show that a group of robotic spacecraft can work together as a team to accomplish tasks and record data autonomously – without explicit commands from mission controllers on Earth.

This electromagnetic interference and compatibility testing took place in November 2023 in a chamber designed to absorb radio waves. Such testing is intended to confirm that the operation of the electronic subsystems do not interfere with each other nor with those on the lander, and that the rover can survive expected electromagnetic disturbances.

Justin Schachter, left, and Manny Soriano are shown.

A division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL manages the CADRE technology demonstration project for the Game Changing Development program within NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington. CADRE will launch as a payload on the third lunar lander mission by Intuitive Machines, called IM-3, under NASA's CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, which is managed by the agency's Science Mission Directorate, also in Washington. The agency's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and its Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, both supported the project. Motiv Space Systems designed and built key hardware elements at the company's Pasadena, California, facility. Clemson University in South Carolina contributed research in support of the project.

For more about CADRE, go to: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/cadre