NASA plans to run trains on moon

The American space agency NASA shared details about a railway system it plans to build on the surface of the moon.

“We want to build the first lunar railway system, which will provide reliable, autonomous, and efficient payload transport on the Moon,” robotics expert Ethan Schaler of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. said.

“A durable, long-life robotic transport system will be critical to the daily operations of a sustainable lunar base in the 2030s,” he added.

The lunar rail proposal is called the Flexible Levitation on a Track, or FLOAT. NASA said such a railway system will be “critical to the daily operations” on the moon.

The main purpose of FLOAT would be to provide transportation services in areas of the moon where astronauts are active, the space agency said. This will include carrying loads of lunar soil and other materials to different areas of the lunar surface.

According to Dr. Schaler, each robot will be able to move at a speed of about 1 mph (1.61 km/h) while carrying cargo of different sizes and forms.

Notably, last month, NASA also announced new efforts to develop and test new vehicle models designed to explore the moon.