FLOAT will be part of NASA's Artemis program.
As the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) readies to return astronauts to the moon, it has announced its plans to build a levitating robot train on the lunar surface. In a blog post, the American space agency provided details about the project called "Flexible Levitation on a Track (FLOAT)", which aims to provide a "robotic transport system" to support future lunar activities of astroinauts visiting the moon. The transport system will be critical to the daily operation of a sustainable lunar base in the 2030s, NASA said in a statement.
"We want to build the first lunar railway system, which will provide reliable, autonomous, and efficient payload transport on the Moon," robotics expert Ethan Schaler of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said. "A durable, long-life robotic transport system will be critical to the daily operations of a sustainable lunar base in the 2030s," he added.
According to NASA's initial design, FLOAT will be for machines only. It will consist of magnetic robots levitating over a three-layer film track to reduce abrasion from dust on the lunar surface. Carts will be mounted on these robots and will move at roughly 1.61 kilometres per hour. They could transport roughly 100 tons of material a day to and from NASA's future lunar base.
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The main purpose of FLOAT would be to provide transportation services in areas of the moon where astronauts are active, the space agency said. This will include carrying loads of lunar soil and other materials to different areas of the lunar surface. The other main use of the railway would be to transport larger loads of materials and equipment to and from the areas where spacecraft land.
"FLOAT will operate autonomously in the dusty, inhospitable lunar environment with minimal site preparation, and its network of tracks can be rolled-up / reconfigured over time to match evolving lunar base mission requirements," NASA said in its post.
The FLOAT system is already being developed by engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. The agency is currently developing and testing different parts of the FLOAT system.
Notably, FLOAT will be part of NASA's Artemis program, which seeks to return astronauts to the moon for the first since 1972. The space agency has set a target landing date of September 2026 to place astronauts on the lunar surface.