Canada’s first moon rover will soon have a name as it prepares to explore a hostile lunar region

The Canadian Space Agency announced a competition today to name Canada’s first-ever rover mission to the moon. This unmanned mission will explore the south polar region of the moon to search for water ice and explore its unique geology.

I am a professor and planetary geologist. I am also the principal investigator for Canada’s first rover mission to the moon and a member of the science team for the upcoming Artemis III mission, the first human trip to the moon since 1972.

A Canadian first

It is almost two years to the day that Canadensys Aerospace Corporation and its team was selected to build the Canadian lunar rover.

This mission is hugely significant because it’s not only the first rover that Canada will send to the moon, but it will be the first-ever Canadian-led mission to another planetary body.

While Canadian technology has made it to the surface of the moon and Mars before, it’s always been on missions led by other nations.

Not that this is a bad thing: science is only possible through collaboration. But it’s a testament to the calibre of Canada’s space community that, for the first time in history, we are in the driver’s seat.

Canada’s first rover mission is truly a team effort. Supporting Canadensys are seven Canadian companies that will build various parts of the rover and its science instruments.

I am proud to lead the science team, which includes faculty and students from six Canadian universities in Québec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia. In keeping with the spirit of collaboration in space, we also have several scientists from the United States and the United Kingdom on our team.

One of the science instruments is also being provided by the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, supported by NASA. In return, Canada gets a launch from NASA.

What’s in a name?

Every mission needs a name, but not everything is equal when it comes to naming spacecraft. Satellites, for example, are often named in a very functional way — like Radarsat, Canada’s flagship satellite program.

When it comes to rover missions, however, NASA has been choosing inspirational names since the early 1990s with its first Mars rover, Sojourner. Then came along Spirit and Opportunity in 2004 followed by Curiosity eight years later.

The most recent arrival on Mars was Perseverance in 2021, which is currently emerging from a deep meteorite impact crater called Jezero.

NASA’s goal in naming its rovers is to inspire interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); this has undoubtedly been a huge success.

The connection to rovers has also become deeply personal, evident in the outpouring of grief when Oppy — the nickname given to NASA’s Opportunity rover — was declared “dead” in 2019.

The European Space Agency followed suit with its hugely popular animated stories for the Rosetta mission — the first mission designed to orbit and land on a comet — that depicted its Philae lander with a backpack and yellow helmet.

Four potential names

The names of NASA’s series of Mars rovers are inspirational and capture the quest of exploration. In contrast, the Apollo and Artemis programs and many other space missions were named after figures in Greek mythology. Other mission names have historical connotations; some also allude to the culture and values of the country leading the mission.

For Canada’s first moon rover, the Canadian Space Agency has come up with a shortlist of four potential names that conjure up various characteristics of Canada as well as capturing the spirit and goals of the mission:

1. Athabasca — A famous river that flows from the Rockies through Alberta to Lake Athabasca. Canada’s rivers have been used for millennia and continue to be pathways of discovery, transport and exchange.
2. Courage — A name that would be representative of the work that has led to the Canadian lunar rover mission.
3. Glacier — Not only are glaciers associated with the polar regions of Canada, but one of the goals of the rover mission is to find water ice on the moon.
4. Pol-R — A word play on polar. Canada is a polar country and the rover mission will be landing in the south polar region of the Moon.

The online voting form to name Canada’s first rover mission to the moon is open until Dec. 20, 2024.

The work continues

As our team waits for Canadians to choose the name of our mission, we are hard at work on all aspects of its design and implementation.

In June, we got the green light for our preliminary design review aimed at assessing whether the original design met all the requirements set forth by the government of Canada, and that the risks, cost and schedule, were all acceptable.

We haven’t chosen an easy mission for Canada’s first trip to the moon. We are going to one of the most hostile regions of the lunar surface: the South Pole. Because of this, our rover must survive very long and cold lunar nights, where the temperature can drop below minus 200C for up to 14 Earth days.

We also have to pack all the hardware, plus our six science instruments, into the rover, which is the size of a small coffee table and weighs only 35 kilograms.

I recently provided an update on the science of our soon-to-be-named mission at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan, Italy. In addition to talking about our science instruments, I also delved into the three main objectives of the mission:

1. To investigate the geology of this unique region of the moon where, so far, no human or robot has ever been.
2. To search for water ice, a major discovery in the decades since the Apollo missions. The moon was thought to be devoid of water, but satellite observations suggest deposits of water ice may be present in this polar region. But we need boots on the ground — or wheels, in our case — to confirm these satellite observations.
3. To study the radiation environment of this region in preparation for the return of humans to the moon.

Canada’s long involvement in space rovers

Over the past two decades, the Canadian Space Agency has funded the construction of a series of prototype planetary rovers ranging from small so-called nano-rovers to massive machines capable of carrying two astronauts. Our new lunar rover has a lot of heritage behind it.

If not for the delay to the launch of the European Space Agency’s ExoMars rover mission, originally scheduled for 2022, Canada would have already had wheels on Mars. The wheels, chassis and drive train for the Rosalind Franklin ExoMars rover was built by Canada’s MDA Space. Launch is now set for 2028.

Canada has also set its sights on a much bigger moon rover. Announced in the 2023 federal budget, Canada aims to build a lunar utility vehicle that will help to transport cargo, perform science investigations and support astronauts on the moon.

This rover will be a major contribution to the NASA-led Artemis program. Following the flight of Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen on the upcoming Artemis II lunar flyby mission, the Lunar Utility Vehicle, Canadarm3 and other Canadian contributions to the Artemis program will ensure a Canadian will one day walk on the moon.