General Motors Is Going Back to the Moon
Photo: General Motors
General Motors announced a new vehicle today, but it won’t be one you can find on dealership lots. The latest offering, a partnership with Lockheed Martin and NASA, is destined for greater things: the moon.
The team at GM created its Lunar Terrain Vehicle, or LTV, after NASA put out a call for proposals last year. This LTV will be part of Artemis, a project to return humans to the lunar surface, and will hopefully help future astronauts roam far from their spacecraft to collect data and visit places we have never been. It’s destined for space travel, but the concept uses several Earth-based features like autonomous technology and electric power.
General Motors (NYSE:GM) are going to the moon literally.
That might not seem like a surprising observation about Lockheed, whose Orion space capsule has long been an integral part of NASA s Project Artemis to send Americans back to the moon. But General Motors is a name no one has associated with space exploration since way back in the 1970s, when the automotive giant helped NASA build the original moon rover.
GM s Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) during testing on Earth in 1971. Image source: General Motors.
As the two companies announced this morning, Lockheed and GM are now teaming up to develop the next generation of lunar vehicles to transport astronauts on the surface of the moon. Dubbed the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV), the companies say that it will enable astronauts to explore the lunar surface farther than ever before.
/PRNewswire/ Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] and General Motors Co. [NYSE: GM] are teaming up to develop the next generation of lunar vehicles to transport.
Lockheed Martin and GM are creating an electric, autonomous rover for NASA s return to the moon
The rover is still in the planning stages, but it will have to travel the lunar south pole
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China is the only country so far to put a lander on the far side of the moon