Yesterday in Washington D.C., NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Masahito Moriyama signed an agreement regarding a Japanese contribution to the Artemis Project, a pressurized lunar rover tentatively called Lunar Cruiser. The vehicle will be transported to the Moon by NASA, and should be available for the Artemis VII mission, currently scheduled for NET 2031.

Lunar Cruiser has been in development since 2019 by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Toyota. The pressurized rover will allow for extended exploration past the range of the previously announced Lunar Terrain Vehicle, and will ostensibly allow for two astronaurs to remain aboard for up to thirty days. Like the LTV, it is expected to last ten years.

According to a press release from Toyota, “The Lunar Cruiser seeks to achieve a high level of mobility and allow astronauts to explore safely and comfortably. We will contribute to this endeavor by offering the reliability, durability, driving performance, and FC (fuel cell) technology that Toyota has cultivated through long years of vehicle development. Technologies developed for the moon can then be fed back to the Earth and be used to create better vehicles and develop technologies for sustainable society and the planet.”

“Lunar Cruiser” is a working name for the lunar rover project, which Toyota makes clear. The company says that the vehicle is officially called a “crewed pressurized rover.” According to them, “It features a pressurized cabin, an enclosed space where the air pressure is controlled to create an environment similar to Earth’s. Unlike previous lunar rovers, this means that those onboard need not wear extravehicular suits, even in an unforgiving environment with one-sixth of Earth’s gravity and temperatures ranging from 120°C during the day to -170°C at night.”

The vehicle is slated to use Regenerative Fuel Cell technology and a 30-day mission duration, meaning it can get through an entire lunar night without needing an outside source to power the vehicle.

Fuel Cells To Power Lunar Cruiser

Regenerative Fuel Cells have dual capabilities: also called reverse fuel cells or secondary fuel cells, are fuel cells that can be operated in two modes: electrolyzer mode and fuel cell mode. In electrolyzer mode, RFCs store water as hydrogen and oxygen. In fuel cell mode, the stored hydrogen and oxygen are used to generate power. RFCs can be powered with electricity to produce hydrogen and oxygen from water. With limited resources on the lunar surface, this technology may well come in quite handy: the South Pole, where Project Artemis is focusing, may well have water resources that could potentially be used with Lunar Cruiser.

Toyota – A Fuel Cell Powerhouse

Toyota is the world’s best-selling automaker, selling 11.2 million cars globally in 2023 for the fourth year in a row. They are also a technological leader in many aspects of vehicle design and technology. Industry analysts have also labeled Toyota as the commercial leader in hydrogen fuel cell technology, pointing out that the company has been at the forefront of the mass-market development of hydrogen cars for decades.

Toyota began working on fuel cell technology in 1992, and by 2005, the FCHV (Fuel Cell Hydrogen Vehicle) was available for sale in limited quantities in Japan and the U.S. In 2014, the Mirai was launched for sale in various global markets, making a mainstream hydrogen fuel cell car available to the public.

Toyota’s Comments On Lunar Cruiser Through The Years

At the onset of the Land Cruiser project in 2019, Toyota Chairman and CEO Akio Toyoda said: “The automotive industry has long done business with the concepts of ‘hometown’ and ‘home country’ largely in mind. However, from now on, in responding to such matters as environmental issues of global scale, the concept of ‘home planet’, from which all of us come, will become a very important concept. Going beyond the frameworks of countries or regions, I believe that our industry, which is constantly thinking about the role it should fulfill, shares the same aspirations of international space exploration.”

Toyoda added at the time that “I am extremely happy that, for this project, expectations have been placed on the thus-far developed durability and driving performance of Toyota vehicles and on our fuel cell environmental technologies.”

Since then, Toyota and JAXA have made progress on the vehicle. In an update in the Toyota Times on September 16, 2023, Toyota announced that “[T]he joint research with JAXA was completed in 2022, and Toyota is currently in the preliminary development phase before beginning work on the main vehicle in 2024.”

Enter Mitsubishi, A Japanese Aerospace Giant

Toyota has also joined forces with another Japanese industrial giant, Mitsubishi. In the same 2023 update where the project phase transition was announced, Ken Yamashita, the Project Head of the Lunar Exploration Mobility Works Project at Toyota said “in late 2022, we confirmed that we would be working together with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, not just in the provision of individual components but on system-level development. We decided this would be a good opportunity to present the team structure behind development.”

The idea makes good sense. MHI is well experienced in aerospace projects and is currently working on a number of Japanese efforts that will not only add to the country’s scientific knowledge and aerospace capability but will also serve to inform projects like the Lunar Cruiser.

Atsushi Nakajima, of MHI Space Systems Division said in September 2023, “Currently, we are also working on space exploration-related projects, including a new cargo transporter, equipment for the I-HAB habitation module of the Gateway crewed lunar orbit station, and the LUPEX rover that will search for water resources on the moon’s surface. We will utilize our existing technologies in spacecraft integration, space environment resistance, and human space stays to help develop the crewed pressurized rover’s systems.”

“In addition,” Nakajima said, “we expect that data acquired from the moon’s surface by the LUPEX rover, which is being developed for launch in the mid-2020s, will contribute to the pressurized rover’s development.”

Now that Toyota and its partners have officially transitioned to its final development phase prior to vehicle production, it is fair to say that this vehicle is well on its way to the showroom floor: the South Pole region of Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor.