On the lunar surface, temperatures can swing from a frigid minus 246 degrees to a scorching 121 degrees, making thermal control critical for any vehicle operating there.
Now the university’s Melbourne Space Laboratory (MSL) is leading the effort to manage heat inside Roo-ver, Australia’s first planned lunar rover being developed by the national ELO2 university consortium.
Based at the university’s Parkville Campus, MSL engineers are working with nine partner universities to design systems that keep the rover’s electronics functioning while shielding it from the punishing lunar environment.
The team brings experience from Australia’s SpIRIT nanosatellite mission, launched in 2023 with almost $7 million in funding from the Australian Space Agency under its Moon to Mars and International Space Investment programs.
SpIRIT – short for Space Industry Responsive Intelligent Thermal – carried Australian demonstration payloads into orbit and included an X-ray detector built by the Italian Space Agency, which scanned the cosmos for black holes. Melbourne engineers designed the system that kept the detector at the right temperature in space.
But the moon will be far tougher.
Unlike SpIRIT’s relatively stable orbit, Roo-ver will face constantly shifting thermal conditions during its trip to the moon and while operating on the surface.
Simon Barraclough, Enterprise Fellow in Space Systems at the university, said the key challenge is balancing the rover’s internal heat with the harsh external environment.
The rover’s electronics generate heat that must be expelled, while at the same time the vehicle must be insulated from solar radiation and the scorching lunar surface.
Solar panels complicate the problem further.
“They’re designed to absorb sunlight to generate power,” Barraclough said. “But that also creates a hot surface on the rover we have to manage.”
Engineers are tackling the issue by carefully positioning equipment inside the rover and using specialised heat-transfer systems such as thermal straps to move heat where it’s needed – or away from sensitive components.
The technology being developed for the moon could also have benefits on Earth. MSL deputy director Professor Airlie Chapman said thermal engineering techniques developed for space missions can improve the reliability of everyday technologies, from electric vehicles and power storage to medical devices and smartphones.
“Space forces us to design systems that simply cannot fail,” Chapman said. “When those ideas flow into everyday technology, everything becomes more reliable.”
The project is also attracting world-class expertise to Australia’s growing space sector.
The lab includes engineers who previously worked on major missions such as the Solar Orbiter and LISA Pathfinder for the European Space Agency, as well as hardware designers from Mars Perseverance Rover at NASA.
For researchers like PhD student Ivan Rodriguez Mallo, who returned to Australia from overseas to join the project, Roo-ver represents a major step for the nation’s space ambitions.
“Australia’s space industry might be smaller than others, but it’s moving forward strongly,” he said. “Projects like this attract talent and help build the capability to compete globally.”
If Roo-ver succeeds, Australia will join an exclusive club.
“Very few countries have ever driven a robot on another world,” Chapman said. “If we can keep a rover alive on the moon, it proves we have the technological maturity for much bigger missions.”
And in space, she added, there are no second chances.
“This is a real mission,” she said. “There’s no reset button – but that’s exactly what makes it so exciting.”