Dubbed CADRE, a trio of lunar rovers are set to demonstrate an autonomous exploration capability on the Moon.
An exciting Moon mission launching in the next year will perform a first, deploying multiple rovers. These will talk to each other and a remote base station, demonstrating an autonomous exploration capability.
The three Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration (CADRE) rovers were recently packaged and shipped from their home at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Each about the size of a small suitcase, the CADRE rovers will launch from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket with Intuitive Machines’ IM-3 mission in late 2025 or early 2026. The ultimate destination is the enigmatic Reiner Gamma region in the Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms) region on the lunar nearside.
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