Nissan Teams With Teledyne & Sierra Space To Design Next-Generation Lunar Terrain Vehicle

Last week, Nissan North America announced a partnership with Teledyne Brown Engineering and Sierra Space to assist in designing the crewed Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) that will support future moon exploration. 

Leading the effort will be Teledyne Brown Engineering, a company with almost seven decades of space hardware design and development experience. The company recently designed, built, and delivered the first of 3 Launch Vehicle Stage Adapters of NASA’s Artemis Vehicle, scheduled for initial launch early this summer. Teledyne will be providing essential services like program management, engineering, manufacturing, integration, and operations in the partnership. 

“Teledyne Brown Engineering built the first lunar rover prototype for Dr. Wernher von Braun in the 1960s, and we have subsequently supported almost every major U.S. human-rated space mission,” said Reggie Spivey, Vice President of the company’s Space Systems Group. “We are proud to continue our extensive presence in space and are excited at the possibility of transporting the first woman and person of color on the surface of the moon.”

Boasting an impressive track record, Sierra Space will provide flight software, communications, navigation, space-qualified mechanisms, pointing, and timing for the LTV project. Their most renowned project to date, the Dream Chaser® vehicle, will perform cargo supply and return missions for NASA to and from the International Space Station. 

Rounding out the stakeholders is Nissan, a company that brings a legacy in automotive design and innovation in its own right. The automaker offers extensive experience and deep knowledge of vehicle technologies, including autonomous driving and intelligent vehicle systems.

“Participation in this project allows for the extension of our industry’s technology and design capabilities to space technology, and vice versa,” said Maarten Sierhuis, Alliance Global Director of Nissan’s Alliance Innovation Laboratory in Silicon Valley, California. “With this partnership, we will explore possibilities of autonomy and teleoperations, power management systems, vehicle connectivity, and human-machine interface to help shape the future of intelligent lunar rovers. We then will translate these learnings from the LTV operating on the lunar surface back to earth.”