NASA Reveals Plans To Build First Railway System On Moon
The space agency is currently developing and testing different parts of the FLOAT system.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has revealed its ambitious plans to construct a revolutionary lunar railway system, marking a significant stride in the pursuit of future lunar exploration.
"We want to build the first lunar railway system, which will provide reliable, autonomous, and efficient payload transport on the Moon," the space agency said in a blog post.
The railway would be part of NASA’s Artemis program.
A durable, long-life robotic transport system will be critical to the daily operations of a sustainable lunar base in the 2030s, as envisioned in NASA’s Moon to Mars plan and mission concepts like the Robotic Lunar Surface Operations 2 (RLSO2), to:
Transport regolith mined for ISRU consumables (H2O, LOX, LH2) or construction
Transport payloads around the lunar base and to / from landing zones or other outposts
NASA has proposed developing 'FLOAT' (Flexible Levitation on a Track) to meet these transportation needs.
The FLOAT system employs unpowered magnetic robots that levitate over a 3-layer flexible film track: a graphite layer enables robots to passively float over tracks using diamagnetic levitation, a flex-circuit layer generates electromagnetic thrust to controllably propel robots along tracks, and an optional thin-film solar panel layer generates power for the base when in sunlight, the space agency explained.
FLOAT robots have no moving parts and levitate over the track to minimize lunar dust abrasion/wear, unlike lunar robots with wheels, legs, or tracks.
The space agency said that FLOAT tracks will unroll directly onto the Moon's regolith to avoid major on-site construction — unlike conventional roads, railways, or cableways.
Individual FLOAT robots will be able to transport payloads of up to 30 kilograms at speeds of about 0.5 meters per second and a large-scale FLOAT system will be capable of moving up to 100,000s kg of regolith/payload multiple kilometres per day.
NASA informed that FLOAT will operate autonomously in the dusty, inhospitable lunar environment with minimal site preparation, and its network of tracks can be rolled-up / reconfigured over time to match evolving lunar base mission requirements.
According to media reports, the FLOAT system is already being developed by engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.
