Lunar Roving Vehicle

space exploration · Apollo missions · Moon · vehicles

Motorized Moon car. The Lunar Roving Vehicle was a special four-wheeled rover that astronauts drove on the Moon during the last three Apollo missions in 1971 and 1972. It ran on batteries and let them travel much farther and faster than walking.

Electric power source. The LRV used silver-zinc batteries to power its electric motors. These batteries had to work in the extreme cold and vacuum of space, which made them pretty tricky to design.

Carried from Earth. The Moon buggy was folded up and packed into the lunar module, then unfolded by astronauts once they landed on the Moon. It weighed about 440 pounds on Earth, but only 73 pounds on the Moon because of lower gravity.

Explored the surface. With the LRV, astronauts could drive several miles away from their landing site to collect rock samples and study the Moon's landscape. Without it, they could only walk a short distance before running out of oxygen.

Scientific missions. The rover helped astronauts gather more Moon rocks and take better measurements of the lunar surface. It made the Apollo missions way more productive than earlier trips where astronauts had to stay close to their spacecraft.