講演情報
[PPS02-P17]Endurance: A Concept for a Long-Range Rover to Explore the Moon’s South Pole-Aitken Basin
*James Tuttle Keane1、Subha Comandur1 (1.Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology)
キーワード：
Moon、South Pole-Aitken、Mission Concept、Lunar Rover
Endurance is a concept for a long-range, highly autonomous, robotic lunar rover designed to explore the farside of the Moon and the largest and oldest impact basin: South Pole-Aitken (SPA). Endurance would traverse over 2,000 kilometers, acquire in situ data, and collect up to 100 kg of samples for delivery to Artemis astronauts at the lunar south pole. This concept represents a new way to explore, combining next-generation rover autonomy and a powerful partnership between human and robotic explorers. Endurance would address long-standing planetary science questions and provide the “ground truth” for the early history of the Solar System, the lunar mantle, and the role of giant impact basins in planetary evolution.
Endurance was initially conceived by the United States of America’s National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s 2023–2032 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey. The Decadal Survey recommended Endurance as the highest priority new robotic mission for NASA’s Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program. In response to the recommendation, NASA initiated the SPA sample Return and eXploration (SPARX) Science Definition Team (SDT) in early 2025. SDTs are a necessary step for NASA’s strategic science missions and often inform future mission and instrument development. The SPARX SDT is anticipated to complete its report in Spring 2026.
In parallel to the SDT, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has continued technical development of the Endurance concept, focusing on key challenges for the mission including power and thermal designs, traverse planning, and autonomy. JPL has developed a new half-scale rover test platform to test these technologies, ERNEST (Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme and Sloped Terrains), and successfully performed field test with fully autonomous, high-speed, day/night driving.
In this presentation, we will present the status of Endurance. Information presented here is pre-decisional and provided for planning and discussion purposes only.
Figure caption: Top: Artist concept of the Endurance rover. Bottom: Map of the farside of the Moon, revealing the South Pole-Aitken basin in topography (grayscale), and the various high-priority science targets in the basin, including impact melt (green), farside volcanism (red), high-Thorium material (purple), and ancient impact basins (cyan). Endurance’s 2,000 km traverse (white) would sample all of these regions before meeting Artemis astronauts at the South Pole.
Endurance was initially conceived by the United States of America’s National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s 2023–2032 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey. The Decadal Survey recommended Endurance as the highest priority new robotic mission for NASA’s Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program. In response to the recommendation, NASA initiated the SPA sample Return and eXploration (SPARX) Science Definition Team (SDT) in early 2025. SDTs are a necessary step for NASA’s strategic science missions and often inform future mission and instrument development. The SPARX SDT is anticipated to complete its report in Spring 2026.
In parallel to the SDT, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has continued technical development of the Endurance concept, focusing on key challenges for the mission including power and thermal designs, traverse planning, and autonomy. JPL has developed a new half-scale rover test platform to test these technologies, ERNEST (Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme and Sloped Terrains), and successfully performed field test with fully autonomous, high-speed, day/night driving.
In this presentation, we will present the status of Endurance. Information presented here is pre-decisional and provided for planning and discussion purposes only.
Figure caption: Top: Artist concept of the Endurance rover. Bottom: Map of the farside of the Moon, revealing the South Pole-Aitken basin in topography (grayscale), and the various high-priority science targets in the basin, including impact melt (green), farside volcanism (red), high-Thorium material (purple), and ancient impact basins (cyan). Endurance’s 2,000 km traverse (white) would sample all of these regions before meeting Artemis astronauts at the South Pole.