PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — One day after NASA announced the crew that’ll return to the moon on an orbital flight comes a big announcement from Carnegie Mellon University. CMU says it has finalized plans to put a rover on the moon.
When it comes to lunar rovers, America’s been there and done that. The Apollo missions gave us the lunar buggy, but what CMU is sending to our closest celestial neighbor will be a lot different.
“Carnegie Mellon Robotics has pioneered land, sea, air, underwater, underground, and now space is our next frontier,” said CMU research professor William L. “Red” Whittaker, the “godfather of extraterrestrial rovers.”
Whittaker is guiding a team of young researchers to build and send the Iris lunar rover to the moon.
“Iris will be the first university-built rover to leave Earth and the first lunar rover not made by a national space agency,” said Iris mission commander Raewyn Duvall.
Read the full article by Ross Guidotti at CBS News.
