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This animated artist's concept depicts three small rovers – part of NASA's CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration) technology demonstration headed for the Moon – driving together on the lunar surface. Motiv Space Systems in Pasadena, California, created the rendering and collaborated with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on critical rover and mobility functions.

Slated to arrive aboard a lunar lander at the Reiner Gamma region of the Moon under NASA's CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, CADRE is designed to demonstrate that multiple robots can cooperate and explore together autonomously – without direct input from human mission controllers.

A trio of the miniature solar-powered rovers, each about the size of a carry-on suitcase, will explore the Moon as a team, communicating via radio with each other and a base station aboard the lander. By taking simultaneous measurements from multiple locations, CADRE will also demonstrate how multirobot missions can record data impossible for a single robot to achieve – a tantalizing prospect for future missions.

Motiv contributed subsystems and hardware elements for three of four CADRE systems, including designing and building the mobility system and rover chassis, the base station, the rover deployers, and the motor controller boards. The company also procured and tested the actuators with the flight motor controller boards.

A still image rendering of a single CADRE rover is available here.

A division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL manages CADRE for the Game Changing Development program within NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington. CADRE is a payload on the third lunar lander mission by Intuitive Machines, called IM-3, under the CLPS initiative, which is managed by NASA'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://go.nasa.gov/cadre