NASA Moves Towards Building Lunar Railway System: Flexible Levitation on a Track

NASA has approved additional funding for a study on a levitating robot train on the moon, showing their belief that the concept is not far-fetched. The project, known as “Flexible Levitation on a Track” (FLOAT), has advanced to phase two of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program (NIAC), which focuses on developing futuristic projects for space exploration. According to NASA, the FLOAT project could lead to the transportation of materials across the moon’s surface by the 2030s.

Project leader Ethan Schaler, a robotics engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explained in a blog post that their goal is to build the first lunar railway system to provide reliable, autonomous, and efficient payload transport on the Moon. This system will be essential for the daily operations of a sustainable lunar base in the 2030s. The plan involves magnetic robots levitating over a three-layer film track to reduce abrasion from lunar dust, with carts mounted on these robots moving at approximately 1 mph (1.61 km/h). They anticipate transporting around 100 tons (90 metric tons) of material per day to and from the future lunar base.

NASA’s Artemis mission aims to send astronauts back to the moon as early as 2026, with the goal of establishing a permanent lunar base to support future space exploration efforts. Other innovative projects that have advanced to the next phase in the NIAC program include fluid-based telescopes and a rocket propelled by plasma. These projects demonstrate NASA’s commitment to exploring cutting-edge technologies for space exploration.