Hawthorne, California\u00a0\u2014 It was 1971 when America’s love affair with the car went lunar.\u00a0The Apollo Lunar Rover turned American moon-walkers into moon-drivers, allowing astronauts to explore more than 50 miles of lunar crust and craters.<\/p>\n
“The Apollo Lunar Rover was a phenomenal machine, but fundamentally it had a very different job to do than the one we’re doing,” Jaret Matthews, CEO and founder of Astrolab, told CBS News.<\/p>\n
On a back street in Hawthorne, California, Matthews took CBS News for a spin in a Zamboni-looking prototype of his company’s 21st-century lunar rover, which it calls\u00a0FLEX<\/a>.<\/p>\n The final design for NASA will look like a\u00a0four-wheel drive electric vehicle that can either rove on its own or carry two astronauts and supplies.<\/p>\n It will be designed to operate for a year, traversing hundreds of miles across the lunar terrain.<\/p>\n “The lunar terrain vehicles have to be a mash-up of the Apollo Lunar Rover to carry two suited astronauts, as well as something more modern like the Perseverance Rover<\/a> on Mars, and can be operated remotely from Earth,” Matthews said.<\/p>\n Astrolab is one of two companies NASA picked to build the first moon buggies for the moon base\u00a0it plans to spend<\/a>\u00a0the next seven years developing near the lunar south pole. NASA also tapped Colorado-based Lunar Outpost to build a moon buggy called Pegasus.<\/p>\n NASA is paying Astrolab and Lunar Outpost about $220 million each for the project.<\/p>\n NASA\u00a0announced its $20 billion plans<\/a>\u00a0for the moon base on Tuesday. Two days later, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin New Glenn Rocket exploded during<\/a>\u00a0a test at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.<\/p>\n The New Glenn Rocket plays a major role in NASA’s Artemis moon program, and Blue Origin is developing a lunar lander that will deliver each rover to the lunar surface. It’s unclear how big\u00a0a setback<\/a>\u00a0the explosion will prove to be to NASA’s moon base plans.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Lunar Outpost CEO Justin Cyrus told CBS News he sees an opportunity on the moon that goes beyond NASA.<\/p>\n “NASA wants to be one of many customers,” Cyrus said. “NASA doesn’t want to be the only customer. And the only way you can do that is creating a vehicle that is truly capable enough to allow for new activities on the lunar surface.”<\/p>\n \n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n \n Go deeper with The Free Press\n <\/p>\n