GM and Lockheed Martin's Lunar Mobility Vehicle Aims for the Moon

Development of General Motors and Lockheed Martin’s Lunar Mobility Vehicle (LMV) is underway, and the two companies intend to deliver the first of these vehicles by the middle of the decade. As its name suggests, the LMV is a moon-bound vehicle that may play a part in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA’s) upcoming Artemis mission that intends to bring humankind back to the Earth’s lone satellite more than 50 years after the conclusion of the Apollo missions.

That said, there are no guarantees this jointly developed lunar vehicle will win NASA’s contract and make the trip. As of this writing, NASA has released a Request for Information (RFI) for what it calls a Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) for the mission. The American space agency intends to release a Request for Proposal (RFP) before year’s end, at which point vendors, such as GM and Lockheed Martin, can submit business proposals for the project, with NASA later awarding one of these vendors the contract. Regardless of the outcome, GM and Lockheed Martin are prepared to build and produce the LMV with or without government funding.

“[This is] a vehicle developed 100 percent for industry,” Derek Hodgins of Lockheed Martin said during a media event at GM’s Milford Proving Ground in Michigan. The two American corporations brought us here to pull back the curtain on the development process of the commercial-use LMV.

DIL-y DIL-y

Testing such a vehicle on our planet, however, is a difficult task given the differences between the Earth’s and moon’s environments, the latter of which includes large craters, an approximate temperature swing of 500 degrees Fahrenheit, and a gravitational pull that’s around one-sixth of the blue marble we call home. So, GM created a digital lunar surface using data supplied by Lockheed Martin. The automaker then feeds this information into its Driver-in-the-Loop (DIL) simulator at the Milford Proving Ground.

Though the DIL is an essential component to the development of the LMV, its use spans multiple projects. In fact, the DIL was key to the short development time of the GMC Hummer EV, which went from idea to complete vehicle in about two years—approximately half the time it typically takes GM to complete this process.

Credit the relative ease by which GM engineers can alter vehicle dynamics using the DIL. Is the virtual vehicle displaying too much body roll or is far too eager to whip its tail out mid-corner? All it takes is a few tweaks to the dataset to adjust the dynamic characteristics of the vehicle’s suspension system.

GM refrained from sharing the cost of the DIL with us; however, a company spokesperson informed us the DIL has more than paid for itself in tire and fuel savings alone—items the automaker pays for when a vehicle undergoes real-world development tests. This isn’t to say the DIL is a replacement for such testing. Rather, the setup allows GM engineers to focus on developing more promising dynamic profiles (and cull less favorable ones) for a given vehicle when the time comes to test it in real-world environments.