General Motors and Lockheed Martin are teaming up to create the new lunar buggy called the Lunar Rover. This duo will be joined by Goodyear which will develop metallic wheels for this vehicle.

There is a need to create wheels specific for the lunar terrain. There the soil consists of regolith dust which has rough properties. That’s where conventional wheels don’t work well.

There the high temperature changes, between day and night, have a negative effect on the behavior of the tires. At night they shrink while during the day they can reach the point of explosion from the increased pressure due to expansion.

Even intense solar radiation changes the quality of the tires.

[Source: http://www.techology.org]