Preparing NASA’s CADRE Moon Rovers for Launch

Three small lunar rovers were packed up at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the first leg of their multistage journey to the Moon. These suitcase-size rovers, along with a base station and camera system that will record their travels on the lunar surface, make up NASA’s CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration) technology demonstration.

CADRE aims to prove that a group of robots can collaborate to gather data without receiving direct commands from mission controllers on Earth, paving the way for potential future multirobot missions.

Seen here are tests of the CADRE software in January 2024 and scenes of a rover getting flipped over, attached to an aluminum plate for transit, and sealed into a protective metal-frame enclosure that was later packed into a metal shipping container a year later, in January 2025.

The hardware was transported from JPL to Intuitive Machines’ Houston facility, where it will be integrated with the company’s Nova-C lander. Intuitive Machines’ third lunar mission (IM-3), which has a mission window extending into early 2026, will deliver CADRE and other NASA payloads to the Moon’s Reiner Gamma region.

JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages CADRE for the Game Changing Development program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. IM-3 is a mission under NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, which is managed by the agency’s Science Mission Directorate.