New Lunar Rover

I caught this at Discovery Green this past weekend, NASA was demonstrating the new Lunar Rover for about four hours Saturday.

The NASA rep told us that the model was a concept, but a pretty well developed one, and that the final lunar rover will probably be pretty similar to this one. She also said the machine is currently controlled by an Xbox, which I think should make Microsoft pretty happy…

And, apparently the rover has two major new features over previous exploratory vehicles. First, the space suits are attached to the outside of the rover, so astronauts don’t climb in and out of them inside the rover and then exit the rover, they climb into the suits through a hole in the back wall of the rover and then seal off their backs and unhook from the rover. It’s crazy, but kind of cool. Also, the NASA rep told us this took the time for getting ’suited up’ down from about 6 hours to 15 minutes. Six hours to get into a space suit!? I can’t believe these guys are only just now getting around to doing something about that!

The second major feature? Cupholders.

Check out the gallery below, it’s pretty cool.

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