Experimental Study for Rover Mobility on Lunar Simulant Terrain in Vacuum Condition

In future planetary exploration missions, rovers are required to traverse over very rough terrain. The Moon's surface is covered with soil which is named regolith. Regolith is easy to slide. A stack occurs to the rovers which are running on the regolith. The cause of the stack is not yet clear. At first, this paper investigates kinematics behavior of lunar rovers with a tire-soil traction mechanism where the condition of the moon is a vacuum. In vacuum condition, experiment of the running is carried out, and, air and vacuum conditions are compared. Finally, this paper considers whether experiment of vacuum is effective on the earth.