Goodyear Takes “Small Step Backwards” in Moon Tyre Development
Goodyear and NASA have, in the US tyre major’s own words “taken one small step backward to make one giant leap forward” in their preparation for future missions to the moon and to Mars. A project jointly funded by Goodyear and the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) has recently been completed. This project called for the development and production of twelve exact copies of the original wire-mesh moon tyre used on the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle in the early 1970s. The creation of these replicates was, says Goodyear, the first step toward understanding this unique non-pneumatic tyre technology, and its applications on both the moon and Earth.