test - Phyics Event - test

Cleveland State University
2351 Euclid Avenue
Science Research Building, Room 152
Cleveland, OH 44115
United States

Speaker: Dr. Heather Oravec, NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC)

Event: Planetary surface mobility remains a fundamental challenge for the success of robotic and human exploration missions on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. At NASA GRC, cutting-edge experimental facilities and materials innovations are advancing the fundamental understanding of rover-terrain interactions and enabling next-generation mobility systems. Specifically, the Simulated Lunar Operations (SLOPE) Laboratory, part of GRC’s Planetary Exploration Test Facilities, provides highly controlled indoor environments to replicate lunar and Martian surface conditions for systematic assessment of rover traction, sinkage, slope traversal, and subsystems performance. With multiple soil bins containing lunar simulant and high-sinkage Mars analogs, an adjustable tilt bed, and sub-millimeter optical motion tracking, the SLOPE Lab uniquely supports full vehicle and subsystem tests under repeatable soil mechanical states to quantify vehicle mobility across a broad range of surface conditions relevant to future missions.
Concurrent with testbed advances, NASA’s GRC has innovated compliant, non-pneumatic tire technologies using shape memory alloys (SMAs), materials that exhibit superelastic behavior throughnreversible phase transformations, to overcome limitations of traditional rigid or spring-mesh tire designs. SMA-based rover tires, built from nickel-titanium alloy elements capable of sustaining orders of-magnitude larger recoverable strains than conventional metal springs, provide enhanced terrain envelopment, durability, and energy absorption without plastic deformation. This approach evolves earlier airless Spring Tire concepts and delivers improved traction, resilience to extreme off-road loading, and mitigation of puncture and damage mechanisms observed on current planetary rovers. Prototypes have demonstrated robust performance in life-test rigs and simulated terrain tests, showing promise for future high-traverse-speed missions where resilient mobility systems are critical. Together, the SLOPE Laboratory’s capability to emulate extraterrestrial terrain mechanics and the SMA tire program’s advanced materials solutions form a synergistic pathway toward enhanced surface mobility for next-generation exploration platforms. These developments support NASA’s strategic objectives to expand operational reach, increase surface traverse efficiency, and enable both robotic and human surface operations across diverse planetary environments.