The First Off-Planet Rover to Have Headlights - NASA's New Water-Hunting Rover
by AutoExpert | 7 November, 2020
None of the wheeled rovers and robots that have been sent from Earth to other places have actually had headlights of any kind. NASA’s next lunar rover, VIPER, is going to change that.
The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover will explore the Moon’s South Pole looking for water. Its size of a golf cart Viper will use a novel sort of wheel-based locomotion - a swimming-like motion capable of pulling the rover out of even very soft soils.
The best innovation is the first-ever application of automotive-style headlights to a wheeled vehicle that won’t be driving on Earth.
NASA’s promising some cool LED arrays for lights and a pair of light arrays mounted on masts and up to six individually-controlled lights around the base of the rover. They’re still developing the lighting system and testing it in the special dark-Moon-sandbox above there.
