Toyota Collaborates With JAXA to Build Lunar Cruiser

Space cars are not new; however, we stopped sending people to the Moon for lunar missions decades ago. Therefore, our technology stayed on Earth, never tested on the Moon. As these times bring new excitement for our natural satellite, several innovations wait for their chances to shine and walk upon the lunar surface.

On Friday, 28th of February, JAXA, and Toyota had finalized and passed the long ongoing project, the “Lunar Cruiser”. With a lot of attention turned to space, new missions will surely be a lot different.

Credit: Toyota Media Kit Albums

What is a lunar cruiser?

“Lunar Cruiser” is the name given to the “manned pressurized rover” according to Toyota’s press release. It is basically a high-tech car that is designed to be used on the surface of the Moon for carrying out hard missions. While on the surface, it reminds one of the cars from the movie “Martian”, it is also an interesting thing to see how close we have come to achieving our sci-fi dreams.

On the technical side, this rover uses electrical batteries that are used in electric cars today. While both ends were trying to manufacture parts, test them, make them suitable for the harsh surface of the Moon since 2020; the project has finally released the prototyped design. Here is the lunar cruiser:

Credit: Toyota Media Kit Albums

New Moon missions

While the last manned Moon mission was in 1972, NASA and other space agencies continue to push the dates further from the targeted ones for planned Moon missions. Back in the days, it was said that what fueled an absurd amount of spending on space programs was the so-called “space race”. It is quite impressive to see a new kind of flame flourishing for going to space, doing Moon missions, and such.

We have been away from the Moon for half a century, maybe it is time to go there and do much better work with our newest cutting-edge technology. Even your iPhone has a million times better computing power than the Apollo mission computers, imagine what we could achieve nowadays. Also, it would be a shame if we are talking about colonizing Mars and don’t even try going to the Moon!

Remember, there are a lot of plans about Moon landings as you may remember from our previous articles like “NASA Will Return to the Moon With Two Robotic Landers This Year“.

While there are sayings that the plans are pushed to 2025, we are certainly going back there one day.