Toyota’s Lunar Lander design for JAXA shares the Land Cruiser’s motto of coming back alive!

While most automakers are designing electric vehicles for the Earth, Toyota is taking it to the next level by designing vehicles for lunar exploration missions! The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA – basically the Japanese Nasa) and Toyota have been working together to develop a manned, pressurized vehicle for exploring the moon using the power of next-generation hydrogen fuel cells. The lunar vehicle is called ‘Lunar Cruiser’ after Toyota’s famously rugged Land Cruiser and it fits perfectly because the Land Cruiser’s motto is ‘come back alive’ which I am sure will be the motto for the Lunar Cruiser as well!

The vehicle is 20 feet tall and 17 feet wide, it is considered to be the first step in the vision of a future lunar surface-based society as JAXA will use the Lunar Cruiser to explore the moon’s north and south poles. The longest time an astronaut has stayed on the moon has been close to 3 days, but this vehicle is crafted for a 6 week-long manned mission which will be a record in itself. To sustain astronauts and the exploration for six weeks, the Lunar Cruiser will be fitted with solar panels as well as hydrogen fuel cells. Since days and nights on the moon last for two weeks each, the solar panels will generate electricity. Given the long nights, the hydrogen fuel cell can also use water from the electricity generation process for cooling and drinking purposes. The energy generated from the solar panels will be stored and the propulsion will come primarily from hydrogen fuel cells – it is geared to run for 620 miles with one full tank and the mission aims to complete 6,200 miles in 42 days.

Lunar Cruiser is roughly the size of two minibusses and has a 140 square feet living space for two astronauts. It has to be designed to traverse the moon’s harsh surface and be safe enough for the astronauts to remove their suits inside. Since development began in 2019, engineers have relied on simulations to work out powertrain heat management in an airless environment and test tire designs for the coarse, sharp,  dusty moon surface. And like a Tesla, it will have automatic driving functions! Testing of the prototype rover’s sub-assemblies is planned to begin next spring and will lead to the construction of a full-scale mule in 2022. So by 2024, we can hope to see a model designed, built, and evaluated for the development team to build the flight model—the one that’ll actually shoot for the stars…and land on the moon.

Designer: Toyota

Need ‘space’? You can now live in this lunar lander tiny house!

Do you want to absolutely leave this planet right now? Me too. Since we can’t really become qualified astronauts and get on a mission to get some ‘space’ from 2020, I found the next best thing – an off-the-grid stay in a lunar lander! Boat architect, Kurt Hughes, has designed a tiny home in Central Washington modeled after the lunar lander module and it is truly as close as us civilians can get to having a literal out-of-this-world stay.

Hughes handcrafted this tiny home to combine his love for houses and boats, and while we have seen many tiny homes having one that looks like a spaceship capsule is exciting! Why the lunar lander? Because it was a home and a ship. Obviously it is not as technically complex as a real NASA lunar lander, so living won’t require any special training and it will certainly be more comfortable. Unlike the real Apollo 11 module, this Lunar Lander is very spacious on the inside. The 250 square feet hexagonal pod weighs 3000 pounds and sits on the banks of Columbia river so you have a lot of open ‘space’. There is a small deck for the inhabitants to enjoy the view and Hughes tried to make sure the pod has a minimum impact on the environment around it.

The home has an open floor plan and two floors with a living area and a bedroom zone. Now you won’t have a crazy view of the cosmic world, but there is a beautiful geodesic skylight to give you a view of the night sky and allow plenty of natural light in. A staircase leads downstairs to the isolated cryogenic sleep chamber (also known as a bedroom by non-astronaut folks!). The lunar module home is complete with a functioning kitchen and bathroom. There is also a cozy coffee table nook which can be used for remote work as well as for intimate meals. To make it authentic, the house number is written in a font called American Captain Patrius that is the same one found on the original Apollo vessels.

The space nerd in my can’t help but countdown already…3…2…1…solid rocket booster ignition and liftoff!

Designer: Kurt Hughes

Blue Origin’s lunar lander mockup is ready for NASA simulations

Blue Origin and its “National Team” partners Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper have delivered their full scale lunar lander mock-up to NASA. The space agency will use the engineering prototype to simulate how it could get “crew, equipment,...

India’s lunar lander crashed within 500 meters of its target

In September, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) lost contact with its Vikram lander as it was making its descent to the lunar surface. If you were one of the people who guessed that Vikram crashed, you are correct. In a report to lawmaker...

Astronaut and Lunar Lander Kids’ Costumes Win Halloween

Between the endless candy, the artful pumpkin carving, the creepy music, the decorations, and the costumes, Halloween is the best of the holidays. There’s just so much more creativity in Halloween than most other holidays, especially when it comes to the costumes.

For Halloween 2019, one family created an awesome pair of costumes for their two young daughters – an astronaut, along with lunar lander module.

Little Charlie and Ellie’s parents did a fantastic job here, with the older of the two girls portraying the Apollo Lunar Module, and the younger of them dressed as an Apollo astronaut. The only thing they’re missing is a rug that looks like the moon’s surface for them to roll out in front of each house as they ask for candy.

Check out more of this amazingly cute duo in the video clip below, and then the entire costume and build gallery up on Imgur.

This isn’t the first time these kids have had awesome Halloween costumes. In 2017, there was the squid, and in 2018, they had the horseshoe crab and an adorable traffic cone.

[via Boing Boing via Geekologie]

Blue Origin teams with spaceflight veterans to complete its lunar lander

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China’s rover finds mysterious minerals on the far side of the moon

Early this year, China's Chang'e-4 lunar lander made history when it became the first spacecraft to touch down on the far side of the moon. Now, according to a study published in Nature, the lander's rover, Yutu-2, may have detected the first signs o...