Polaris

DESCRIPTION

Polaris is a Mobile-Robots from Astrobotic Technology. It is built for Exploration, Lunar surface payload mobility (prospecting, excavation, drilling). Key figures: 90 kg payload.

Polaris is Astrobotic's large lunar rover, designed for diverse payloads with distinct mission profiles such as regolith digging, drilling, excavation and water-ice harvesting. It carries up to 90 kg of payload above or below its main deck - including drills, excavators and robotic arms - and provides mobility, power, direct-to-Earth communications and protection from the lunar environment, surviving extended periods in permanently shadowed regions and making long traverses. Its four-wheel-drive skid-steer mobility system has independent actuators and rocker suspension, 55 cm of ground clearance, can climb obstacles up to 40 cm and reaches 37 cm/s, covering tens of kilometres in a lunar day; it has been tested in terrestrial rock yards and regolith simulants. It navigates autonomously or by teleoperation using stereo vision with inertial, wheel-rotation and Sun sensors to estimate its pose and model terrain, and it stows on and deploys from landers such as Astrobotic's Griffin. Astrobotic offers payload delivery on Polaris for USD 4.5 million per kilogram, including 0.5 W of continuous power and 10 kbps of bandwidth per kilogram.

FEATURES