Exploring the Moon will require rovers that can think for themselves – an upcoming NASA mission will test whether they can - Robohub

By Wanjiku Chebet Kanjumba, University of Florida

NASA is planning to send three small rovers to the Moon with a single instruction: Work out among yourselves how to explore a patch of ground.

The Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration mission, or CADRE, will land on the side of the Moon facing Earth as part of NASA’s IM-3 launch, planned for late 2026. These rovers will spend roughly two weeks mapping the terrain as a self-guided team. No joystick will control them, and no human will approve each turn.

Engineers test whether the CADRE rovers can drive and coordinate on their own at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The rovers will elect a leader among themselves, assign their own tasks and redraw their plans as a group when one of them runs low on charge. If it succeeds, CADRE will be the first time NASA has operated multiple rovers beyond Earth as a single autonomous system.