Prototype Design of the CableCat Lunar Rover

Fulfilling the goal of NASA’s Artemis program to establish a sustainable presence on the Moon will require a fleet of robotic vehicles performing exploration, resource extraction, and science missions. The challenge of distributing power to each of these assets will be vital to mission success. The CableCat design concept addresses this challenge by establishing a power and data infrastructure by autonomously traveling to areas of interest, notably Permanently Shadowed Regions (PSRs), while unspooling a power and data cable. The CableCat is modeled after a cable spool with two independently driven wheels located at each end of a central hub. The mechanical design of the CableCat is presented along with the procedure for fabrication and construction of a prototype vehicle. The test program for the CableCat consists of dynamics simulation and full scale hardware testing of the prototype vehicle.