Venturi Space France has unveiled the Mona lunar rover, a 100% European-designed marvel set to revolutionize the European Space Agency’s ambitious mission to land astronauts on the Moon by 2030. The 750kg rover is equipped with an electric propulsion system, solar panels and three high-performance batteries, and is built to reach a top speed of 20 km/h. It can also survive the Moon’s temperatures, which plunge to -133C at night and rocket to 121C in the day.
00:00Europe's space ambitions are literally out of this world, with its space agency aiming to send the continent's first astronauts to the moon's surface by 2030.
00:12Venturi Space France, based in Toulouse, is firmly committed to the ESA's goal, unveiling this 100% European-designed mona-lunar rover at the Paris Air Show, a bold fusion of functionality and fashion.
00:28My mission here is to do exactly what I'm doing in other fields, is to listen to the engineers, to understand them, and try to figure out how I can make all those constraints and all those technical details beautiful.
00:50The rover is specifically designed to meet the needs of the ESA and the French National Centre for Space Studies.
00:58She weighs in at 750 kilograms, is equipped with an electric high-propulsion system, solar panels and three high-performance batteries.
01:07Now the mona-lunar is also engineered to withstand several lunar nights, a major challenge in moon exploration.
01:14This is due to extreme temperature changes, with temperatures near the moon's equator getting as hot as 121 degrees during the day, before plummeting to minus 133 degrees in the darkness.
01:29Another part of the mona-lunar's design is focused on mobility, which can be a matter of life or death for astronauts navigating unpredictable terrain.
01:41You see the big breeze behind me. You have very good tractions. On loose soil, you can have flotation. It means that you do not remain stuck on the lunar soils.
01:52So extended mobility is also one of the main features of this rover.
01:57And as the commercial space race continues to boom, so too does the pace in developing these cutting-edge products.
02:07Those products that are imagined here on Earth and that one day they will be on Mars, on the moon, this is, wow, it's kind of a dream that is coming true.
02:17As European players like Venturi Space position themselves as industry leaders at home and on another world.
