How to avoid a puncture on the Moon

Return to the moon after half a century, then to Mars, literally means re -invention of the wheel.

After all, Mars is a long way to return if you get an apartment.

“One of the things you can’t get is a hole,” says Florent Mignegox, CEO of Terry Michelin’s French maker.

Difficult conditions on Mars have been emphasized by experimenting with uninhabited curiosity.

Just one year after landing in 2012, its six aluminum classified tires were clearly tires with hole and tears.

As for the moon, Artemis’s American tasks It aims to return astronauts therePerhaps by 2027.

ARTEMIS’s subsequent tasks are planning to use Ronar Rover to explore the southern pole of the moon from Artemis V, currently scheduled for 2030.

Artemis astronauts will lead further than their ancestors, who have not ventured at six landing between 1969 and 1972 on the moon.

“The goal is to cover 10,000 km in 10 years,” said Silvan Bartheette, who runs the Michelin Laundry wheel program in the town of Clairemont Firand, which runs Michelin Al -Qamari’s wheel program in Clairemont Firand.

“We are not talking about a week -long short periods, and we are talking about decades of use,” says Dr. Santo Badola, who has a doctorate in material science and works with NASA as an engineer at the John Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Ohio.

One of the great challenges of anyone developing technology for the moon is huge temperature domains.

In the columns of the moon, the temperatures of the columns can decrease less than -230 ° C, and this is not far from absolute scratch, as the atoms stop moving.

This is a problem for tires.

“Without the movement of the atom, it is difficult to make the materials able to deformation and return,” says Dr. Badola.

The tires should be able to deformation as they pass on the rocks and then return to their original shape.

“If we distort a permanent framework, this does not roll efficiently, and we have problems with energy loss,” says Dr. Badola.

The new wheels will also carry much larger loads of light Rovers astronauts in APOLLO.

The following space tasks will need to pay “larger scientific platforms and mobile habitats that become larger and larger.”

This will be a more stable problem on Mars, as gravity is doubled on the moon.

Apollo lunar Rovers used tires made of zinc -plated piano wire in a woven network, with a group of about 21 miles.

Since the maximum temperatures and cosmic rays destroy the rubber or convert them into a brittle cup, and high -performance metal alloys and high -performance plastic are the main competing for space tires without air.

“Generally, metal or fiber -based metal materials are used in these wheels,” says Pietro Baglion, team leader at Mission Rosalind Franklin, who aims to send Rover to Mars by 2028.

One promising materials are nickel and titanium.

“Introduce it and make a rubber metal that can bend all these different methods, and it will always extend to its original shape,” says Earl Patrick Cole, CEO of The Smart Tires.

Nitinol’s flexible properties call “one of the most crazy things that you will see ever.”

A possible “revolutionary” substance says, Dr. Badola says, because an alloy absorbs energy and releases it as it changes cases. He says he may have heating and cooling solutions.

However, Mr. Barthet believes in Michelin that the material is closer to high -performance plastic will be more suitable for tires that need to cover long distances on the moon.

Meanwhile, BridgesTone followed a vital simulation approach, by making a model of camel tools.

Beauty contains soft and oily feet that separate its weight to a wider surface area, while preventing its feet from drowning in loose sandy soils.

Inspired by this, BridgesTone uses a note -like material for its jurist, while the wheel includes a thin speaker of minerals that can bend.

The bending divides the weight of the lunar unit into a larger communication area, so that it can lead without stumbling in the fragments of rocks and dust on the moon.

Michelin and BridgesTone are every part of different federations, along with Venturi Astrolab in California, providing proposed tire technology to NASA at the John Glen Center this month.

NASA is expected to make a decision later this year – you may choose a single proposal or adopt elements of many of them.

Meanwhile, Michelin tests her tires by driving a Rover sample around a volcano near Cleremont, which resembles crushed terrain Moon surface.

Bridgestone does the same on the west of the dune sandy sand.

Mr. Parthet says that the European Space Agency also explores the possibility of whether Europe may make Rover on its own for other tasks.

Work may have some useful applications here on Earth.

While working on a doctorate at the University of Southern California, Dr. Cole joined NASA’s entrepreneurial program to work on marketing some technology from the flexible, flexible Mars framework.

An early product this year will be nickel-tanium bicycle frames.

At a price of about $ 150 (120 pounds), tires are much more expensive than regular tires, but they will be very durable.

It is also planning to work this year on strong motorcycle tires, which aims at off -road areas.

On all of this, his “dream” remains to play a role in the return of humanity to the moon.

“So, I can tell my children, look there on the surface of the moon,” he says. “My father’s tires are there.”