UK is sending a space exploration rover to the moon, in what will be a first for the country.
A private space exploration firm, has announced that it will send the UK’s first rover to Moon's surface in 2021 - becoming just the fourth nation to put a rover there as the country joins the new age space race.
Spacebit - a London-based startup - plans to launch its robotic “crawler” to the moon by 2021, following in the footsteps of the US, the USSR/Russia and China.
Spacebit says this is something that hasn’t been achieved before. The company signed an agreement with US firm Astrobotic to launch its first mission in 2021 on Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander. The American lander will be launched on a Vulcan rocket from a site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Spacebit co-founder and CEO Pavlo Tanasyuk said the launch “will carry the first lunar lander from American soil since Apollo.”
BRITAIN IS GOING TO THE MOON! Space tech firm will have rover on lunar surface by 2021 (Image: GETTY • SPACEBIT)
The rover is a tiny four-legged robot developed by British start-up Spacebit. It has sensors that can take measurements and collect exploration data for researchers to analyze.
The robot also comes equipped with cameras — one of which can take “robot selfies” — and can withstand big swings in temperature, from 130 degrees Celsius (266 degrees Fahrenheit) during the day to minus 130 degrees Celsius at night.
It will also eventually be able to navigate through so-called lunar lava tubes, which are tunnels beneath the surface of the moon thought to have once been filled with lava.
Britain’s rover will be the country’s first to be sent to the moon, and will see it join the ranks of the U.S., China and Russia which have all previously accomplished that mission. The U.K. has built another rover, called the Rosalind Franklin, which it hopes will one day land on Mars.
