China Reports Progress on Lunar Rover – Updated

Posted
by
Doug Messier
on April 23, 2008, at 9:24 pm
in News
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The Xinhua news agency reports that Shanghai engineers have built and tested three prototypes of lunar rovers in advance of a planned 2013 landing.

“The Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology had made significant progress in key technologies for the locomotion system,” Xinhau reports.

You can see a picture of one prototype here. The 1.5-meter tall, 200-kilogram rover is designed to travel at an average speed of 100 meters per hour.

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  • http://www.actionforspace.com www.actionforspace.com

    Will it be a knockoff of the Russians first rover? Those Chinese are great at implementing something that someone else has done with a twist. Their manned launcher is a knock-off Soyuz.

    I’m not saying that this is a bad thing. I wish that NASA had done a knock off of Saturn 5 decades ago.

  • http://www.parabolicarc.com Doug

    Well, judge for yourself. There’s a picture of one of the prototypes here.