2024-05-14 14:31:29
The US space agency NASA announced “financing a project aimed at developing the first floating railway on the moon’s surface.”
The agency said, “The project works with flexible lifting or floating technology, using magnetic robots, and aims to transport 100 tons of materials to the surface of the moon daily, on a foldable track, similar to a race track, moving at a speed of 1.61 kilometers per hour.”
“A durable, long-life automated transportation system will be critical to the daily operations of the sustainable lunar base, which is scheduled to begin construction in 2030,” said Ethan Schaller, a robotics engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and project leader.
He stated in a post on the “NASA” blog: “We want to build the first lunar railway system, to provide a reliable, independent and efficient means of transporting cargo on the Moon, and unlike what happens on Earth, the space network will not use fixed rails.”
He added: “We will create lengths of flexible tracks that can be rolled directly onto the lunar surface, designed to reduce construction time, and if the location of the lunar base changes, they can simply be easily folded and moved to another location.”
“The actual movement will be by a series of unpowered magnetic robots floating above the surface of the track that generated an electromagnetic force to propel the robots to their destination,” Schaller continued.
While the dailymail website reported, “The railway that NASA seeks to build will not resemble the one on Earth, and fixed rails will not be used in the lunar transportation network.”
“The idea of creating a train on the moon is scheduled to be tested by creating a miniature set of tracks and robots that will be funded to be used for testing purposes,” said John Nelson, executive director of the NIAC program, adding: “With this step, NASA opens a door to the future.”
Last updated: May 13, 2024 – 19:03
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2024-05-14 14:31:29