A Study of Experimental Facility for Lunar Rover Development

Abstract. The lunar exploration project of China is underway, and a lunar rover will be developed and launched onto the lunar surface in the next step. In order to verify the reliability and diverse functions (such as landing impact, autonomous navigation and tele-operation) of the rover, an experimental facility for the lunar rover development is needed. Based on the knowledge of the lunar surface environment and the existing simulation technology, this paper presents an idea for realization of an integrated experimental facility for the lunar rover development. It is well known that the lunar environment is very tough and the moon geological feature is complicated too. A kind of knockdown simulator for lunar surface environment is suggested. The main part will include various mobile units, each of which simulate a kind of lunar surface topography in different dimension, such as craters, hills, and ravines. One unit is one grid, which is a sand table in small size, but the sand is a sort of man-made lunar soil simulant, which has similar chemical composition, particle size distribution, and engineering properties to the true lunar sample. According to the request of the one kind of test, corresponding units or grids are selected and assembled to be a test bed, which dynamically achieves the simulation of different terrain on the lunar surface in a limited area. At the same time, a relative fewer units can be chosen to assemble a smaller test bed, which can cooperate with other existing environmental simulators (for example, vacuum container, dropping tower) to fulfill an integrated environmental simulator.