Motiv Space Systems has agreed a partnership with Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Lab to develop COLDArm, a “first-in-kind” robotic arm that will be built to survive the extreme cold of the Moon’s South Pole, ushering in a new era of extended space exploration on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
COLDArm (short for Cold Operable Lunar Deployable Arm) is a vital component of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) a NASA program to send small robotic landers and rovers to the Moon, including its South Pole – a region known for extremely cold temperatures in the dark of night.
In fact, that’s the biggest design challenge faced by the space robotics engineers at Motiv and JPL: the extreme cold. To date, there aren’t that many space components that are expected to last a lunar night or to operate during a lunar night, but all of that is changing. [Read more…] about Motiv Space Systems and Nasa to develop robotic arm for extreme cold environments
