Toyota will build a motorhome for and life on the moon

Top NASA manager Bill Nelson and Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Masahito Moriyama signed a landmark agreement. According to it, the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) will provide the Americans with a fully functional vehicle for the development of the lunar surface. It will be used in the Artemis VII mission in 2031. In return, NASA has agreed to the participation of Japanese astronauts in the joint development of the Earth’s satellite.

The technical realization of the project is entrusted to Toyota. This will be a new type of vehicle, which received for lack of a better name, the name “lunar house on wheels”. The key idea is that astronauts will be able to be inside it without spacesuits, and not only move around the Moon, but fully live and work inside for shifts lasting up to 30 days. The service life of the first vehicle is designed for 10 years, it is intended to explore the southern part of the Moon.

The vehicle has dimensions of 6.0×5.2×3.8 meters, the default crew is two people, the range is stated at 10 thousand kilometers. An interesting solution – hydrogen and oxygen for the fuel cell will be extracted by recycling waste water. There are also massive solar panels on board as an additional energy source. The design of the vehicle is completely airtight, so various experiments can be conducted inside, including growing live crops.

The Japanese space agency and NASA are aiming for joint lunar exploration, as the project is too labor-intensive and expensive to pull off alone.