LORS reference rover

Open integration framework for lunar surface systems.

About the Initiative

A shared technical baseline for lunar robotics.

As lunar activity expands, teams are building hardware against independent assumptions — reconciled only late in the integration cycle, creating duplicated effort and risk.

LORS provides a neutral pre-integration layer: interface definitions, conformance criteria, and validation tools at the boundaries where incompatibilities most often emerge — mechanical attachment, electrical behavior, data exchange, and safety logic. A small open-source lunar rover is being developed as the reference implementation for testing those interfaces end to end.

Mission at a glance

$6.5M
Total mission budget
2 kg
Reference rover — LORS-R1 flight model
14 days
Nominal surface operations
2030
Target launch readiness
Project Roadmap

From spec to lunar surface.

The development path runs from framework definition through environmental qualification, flight model fabrication, and surface operations.

'24–'25
Framework Initiation
Initial interface definitions on GitHub. Community formation and Phase 1 research completed.
2026
System Definition
Requirements consolidation. Publication of the first LORS baseline specification.
2027
Subsystem Prototyping
Digital modeling, subsystem prototyping. Rover Rucheyok development underway.
2028
Qualification & Build
Environmental qualification. Flight model fabrication and integration with delivery provider.
2030
Lunar Surface Ops
Launch, deployment, and surface operations. LORS validation report published openly.
Steering Committee

An open initiative with a visible record.

LORS is open to anyone. Phase 1 brought together engineers, founders, and scientists who contributed to the framework and its first interface work.

Kent Nebergall
Steering Committee Chair, The Mars Society
Sky Lavergne
CEO & Founder, FUTURA
William Schineider Rabelo
Civil Engineer (Geoscience) · CFD & Transport Phenomena
Get Involved

Interoperability doesn't happen by accident. It requires shared standards, common interfaces, and the discipline to validate before you fly.

Research

Phase 1 Report

LORS Phase 1 Research Report Download PDF

Phase 1 was sponsored by MoonDAO

The first research phase established the framework structure, interface domains, and conformance methodology for lunar surface integration standards.

The repository is a live database

Interface definitions, conformance checklists, requirements-to-test traceability, telemetry schemas, and simulation templates — continuously updated as the standard evolves.

View on GitHub
Engineering interviews

The standard should reflect where integration fails.

Integration failures usually appear at the boundary: mechanical fit, electrical behavior, data exchange, or safety logic. Teams then spend weeks reconciling assumptions that should have been shared from the first design review.

LORS is collecting short engineering interviews with teams working on lunar and planetary surface systems. The conversations focus on concrete integration work, and the findings will shape the interfaces, conformance tests and validation tools in the standard.

Book a 20-min Interview
Rover Rucheyok

The reference implementation, now in creation.

Rucheyok — "small stream" — is the open-source 2 kg lunar rover being built to validate LORS end-to-end. Every design decision, qualification test, and integration log will be published openly.

Reference implementation

The rover will provide a concrete way to test whether an open architecture can be specified, qualified, integrated with a lander, deployed, and operated through the shared framework.

Reusable evidence

The project is intended to publish rover documentation, interface specifications, qualification records, and open datasets for future lunar and planetary work.

For contributors

The build needs engineers across mechanical, software, electrical, and operations disciplines to develop and test the standard.

For mission partners

The work can be supported through agency funding, industry sponsorship, research grants, and aligned philanthropy.

2 kg · flight mass ~14 day ops CLPS delivery ROS 2 · open CAD launch 2030

LORS-R1 · Rucheyok · Reference Spec

Mass (landed)2.00 kg
Footprint320 × 280 × 220 mm
Drive4× MOD-WHL
Power Bus28 V · 120 Wh
ComputeARM A78 · ROS 2
CommsS-band DTE + UHF
Thermal−170 to +120 °C
HW LicenseCERN-OHL-S v2
SW LicenseApache 2.0

Budget Allocation

Rover & Test Campaign25–35%
Lunar Delivery & Integration45–60%
Ops, Compliance & Risk10–25%