The German company PTScientists has seriously decided to send a couple of its rovers to the moon, and it is planned to land exactly in the place where American astronauts from the Apollo 17 spacecraft landed in 1972. The Germans want to visit the site of the final sixth landing of people on the moon and to see the moon buggy left there by the Americans. The space mission will be made possible thanks to financial and technical support from the automobile company Audi.
“I wonder how the American buggy is doing there. Has it been torn to pieces by asteroids over the years, or has it stood in the same place since the day it was left there? This is a very interesting landing site, we think,”says one of the mission leaders, Carsen Becker.
A flight to the moon is scheduled for late 2017 or early 2018. The company wants to send its rovers to a natural satellite using the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Earlier, the company became one of the winners of the Google Lunar X Prize competition, in which the most promising manufacturers of lunar rovers were selected from among numerous participants. The American moon buggy is not just so interested in scientists. Its study will make it possible to understand how harmful a long stay on the Moon is for mechanisms and materials, as well as how dangerous its unfavorable conditions are.
The mission plan says landing at a distance of 3-4 kilometers from the location of the buggy. After that, scientists plan to approach the object approximately 200 meters. Closer, most likely, it will not work out due to the peculiarities of the landscape. You will have to explore the object remotely from this distance. The rover will be equipped with a special camera with three lenses, which will allow the buggy to be examined at several wavelengths of light. Among other things, PTScientists plan to measure gravity at the landing site of the Apollo 17 astronauts, as well as perform a number of other experiments.
SERGEY GRAY