A small Moon-bound rover is clamped to a special “shaker table” that vibrates intensely to make sure the hardware will survive the jarring rocket ride out of Earth’s atmosphere. This is one of three rovers – each about the size of a carry-on suitcase – that are part of NASA’s CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration) technology demonstration.

This vibration testing took place in November 2023 at a National Technical Systems test facility in Santa Clarita. In the video, the rover is shaken in two directions – first along the “z” axis and then the “x” axis. Another test, not shown, subjected the rover to a “y” axis vibration test.

CADRE is designed to show that a group of robotic spacecraft can work together as a team to accomplish tasks and record data autonomously &ndash without explicit commands from mission controllers on Earth. The three small rovers will ride aboard a lunar lander that will carry the project’s base station and camera assembly.

A division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL manages the CADRE technology demonstration project for the Game Changing Development program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington. CADRE will launch as a payload on the third lunar lander mission by Intuitive Machines, called IM-3, under NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, which is managed by the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, also in Washington. The agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and its Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, both supported the project. Motiv Space Systems designed and built key hardware elements at the company’s Pasadena, California, facility. Clemson University in South Carolina contributed research in support of the project.

For more about CADRE, visit: www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/cadre.

See rover “shake table” test video here.