To the moon! CMU students one step closer to searching for water on moon's South Pole

Carnegie Mellon University students, professors and a spin-off company have cleared their first major hurdle in developing a small robotic rover called MoonRanger for NASA set to search for water and ice on the south pole of the moon in 2022.

“We’re going to the moon. Who gets to do this as a student?” said Lydia Schweitzer, 23, of Indianapolis, a master’s student in computational design who led the systems engineering team.

The successful internal review is one in a series of reviews, Schweitzer said. The two-day review involved more than 60 people, including people who worked on the Apollo program and Mars rover project.

The next review will be a NASA standard review of the project set for February 2020, Schweitzer said.

This isn’t a classroom exercise.

“It’s a real mission,” she said. “We are so privileged and so grateful.”

The best part? The team, Schweitzer said: “It takes a certain kind of person who wants to go the moon and pursue it.”

The team offers up expertise in engineering, robotics, computer science, software engineering, human-computer interaction, architecture and design. The team also has taken advantage of a network of CMU alumni with expertise in space robotics to solve problems and optimize the rover’s design.

About the size of suitcase, MoonRanger will explore a little more than a half-mile per Earth day in sunlit and dark conditions.

It’s the fastest a lunar or planetary rover has ever traveled.

MoonRanger will be the first rover to search and potentially gather evidence of buried ice on the moon.

If found in a sufficient concentration, it might be the most valuable resource in the solar system, according to William “Red” Whittaker, University Founders Research Professor in the Robotics Institute.

“Water is key to human presence on and use of the moon,” said Whittaker, who is leading development of MoonRanger. “Space agencies around the world are intent on investigating it.”