With the announcement in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy that America would send astronauts to the Moon and return them safely to Earth before the end of the decade as part of Project Apollo, NASA began lunar vehicle mobility studies. Size was not a deterrent; these were concepts to prove a vehicle's ability to navigate extremely rugged terrain believed to exist on the Moon. On this page you will see just a few of the many vehicles and motive concepts the space agency studied during the 1960s before the Lunar Roving Vehicle design was finalized.

One of the first vehicle studies NASA undertook was for a robotic rover called the Surveyor Lunar Roving Vehicle (SLRV).  Two NASA-selected aerospace contractors were  selected to produce vehicles for study. One was General Motors Defense Research Laboratories in California and the other was Bendix Corporation. The GM vehicle (built for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) was a six-wheeled design.  Shown above, left, is a model of the GM SLRV during a test by the JPL, and above, center is a full-size wheel test of the GM SLRV wheel at GM's Defense Research Laboratories.  The Bendix SLRV is shown above, right during its demonstration test.

The U.S. Geologic Survey conducted tests of the prototype SLRVs.  The GM unit proved superior in overcoming the obstacles in the test range. The Bendix vehicle did not perform  as well and the treads on the vehicle suffered damage. The SLRV was also conceived to perform other tasks while on the lunar surface, but the U.S.G.S. determined these could not be effectively performed by either vehicle, and the program was cancelled.

The Mobility Test Articles (MTAs)

The three primary builders of lunar mobility concept vehicles, or Mobility Test Articles, during the 1960s were General Motors, Grumman and Bendix. Understandably, General Motors had decades of automotive and truck design and manufacturing to draw on with regard to its lunar vehicle concepts. GM also had Dr. Mieczyslaw Bekker, a renowned expert in sophisticated vehicle and suspension designs for land locomotion. His expertise was brought to bare on practically all the full-size vehicles and models GM constructed under contract for NASA during the 1960s. To absorb the countless shocks each wheel would encounter on the airless Moon, GM developed open wire mesh wheels instead of pneumatic tires for these vehicles, such as the one picture above, left. In the full gravity of Earth, however, pneumatic tires were often employed during vehicle testing, as pictured in the photo above, right.

Bendix Corporation took an unorthodox approach to wheel design for its Mobility Test Article it built for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, shown above.  The size of the vehicle and its wheels were a reflection of the perceived cratered lunar surface and the need to be able to drive into and out of craters of a certain size, shown above, left.  The design of the wheel and its function is being explained to Dr.Wernher von Braun, Director of the Marshal Space Flight Center in the photo above, right, taken in 1965.  Dr. von Braun often drove the Mobility Test Articles himself at the MSFC test grounds.

Grumman Corp. took a third approach to the design of the wheels for its MTA. Its vehicle was conceived as a dual mode lunar roving vehicle, which could be operated either by a single astronaut, or as a robotically-guided rover. The MTA pictured above, left was powered by four wheels, while the concept for the dual mode lunar roving vehicle( either manned or unmanned) is shown depicted with six wheels and having a fully articulated chassis which had been proven to have the best obstacle-climbing ability. Shown below is the Grumman MTA undergoing test at the USGS Cinder Lake facility in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Another Grumman MTA proposed design featured a pressurized crew cabin and a towed-trailer to supply the vehicle's power., shown below.  The cabin would have allowed several astronauts to operate and live in the vehicle during extended lunar exploratory excursions.