Fly a Lunar Rover Mission — Live
A two-hour live mission simulation at the lunar South Pole. Six command seats. Real terrain. Real telemetry. Real decisions under pressure.
$99 presale $150 regular
MoonDAO citizens: $90
Your rover is waiting on the surface.
Your lander is down at 87° South — lunar South Pole territory, where space agencies are searching for water ice. Your rover has rolled off the ramp. Mission control is live, five other commanders are on the loop, and Flight is waiting for your status report.
For the next two hours you're not watching a simulation — you're running one. You'll drive your own rover across realistic lunar terrain, read live telemetry, follow real operational procedures — health checks, GO/NOGO discipline, anomaly calls — capture an elemental spectrum of lunar rock, and fly a survey grid hunting the neutron signature of buried water ice.
And somewhere along the way, something will go wrong. Diagnosing it and recovering with your crew is the part nobody forgets — and it's exactly how real rover operators are trained.
When the mission ends, you'll understand how lunar rovers are actually operated. Not from a textbook. From the seat.
Two scenarios. One evening.
First Steps on the Moon
Health check. First drive. Approach a science target and capture an elemental spectrum of lunar rock with your APXS instrument. You learn the console, the comms discipline, and what it feels like when Flight finally gives you GO.
First Discovery
Fly a survey grid with your neutron spectrometer and watch the counts climb — hydrogen means water ice. Pinpoint the signal, mark the site, claim the discovery. Mid-survey, mission control injects a live anomaly. Notice it. Call it. Recover.
Mission timeline
Your $99 command seat includes:
One of six command seats — your own rover, your own console, your callsign on the voice loop
Pre-mission briefing pack — your operator training (~1 hour: mission, rover systems, console, procedures), sent on registration
2-hour live mission with two facilitators running mission control
A live anomaly injected during your mission — the controlled-failure training real operators get
Full mission recording delivered within 48 hours
Mission 001 certificate with your name and callsign
Debrief & Q&A with the engineers building LunCoSim and the Lunar Open Robotics Standard (LORS)
Founding crew status — named in the mission log, alumni pricing on all future missions
For context: commercial flight-simulator experiences run $150–300/hour; professional space-operations training costs thousands and isn't open to the public. This is the cheapest seat in any mission control on Earth — and your ticket directly funds open-source lunar software.
Secure your command seatWho's on the loop with you
Rod Mamin
Flight Director
Rod Mamin is a space systems engineer and the founder of LunCo. He led the development of Asagumo, the first walking rover designed for the Moon, and trained as a lunar rover operator through Astrobotic — putting him in the rare group of people who have both built Moon-bound hardware and been certified to drive it. Today he leads LunCoSim and the Lunar Open Robotics Standard (LORS), bringing professional mission-design tools into the open. On mission day, Rod runs the loop: he holds GO/NOGO authority, owns the timeline, and makes the calls. Whatever breaks is his doing — and yours to fix.
Rina Faber
Mission Scientist
Rina Faber is a planetary scientist and co-founder of LunCo, with a research career spanning Moon/Mars mineralogy, space medicine, and rover instrumentation. She trained on ESA's ExoMars program, developing calibration and analysis methods for the rover's infrared spectrometer, and maps planetary surfaces using hyperspectral data and deep learning. Her space-medicine work — lunar dust toxicity, radiation effects, cosmonaut health — means she understands not just what the Moon hides, but how it fights back. Rina designed this mission's science: the South Pole exploration profile, the rock spectroscopy, the water-ice survey. On the loop she's SCIENCE — interpreting your data live and telling you what your rover just discovered.
What you'll be flying on
Your mission runs on LunCoSim, our open-source collaborative space-mission simulator: a shared, real-time 3D lunar environment where multiple participants operate rovers simultaneously, with physics-based locomotion and standards-based mission-control telemetry (XTCE — compatible with NASA's OpenMCT). The code is public: inspect it, star it, contribute to it — then fly a mission on it.
Is this a real rover on the Moon?
No — it's a high-fidelity simulation of a realistic mission profile. The terrain, telemetry, procedures, teamwork, and pressure are as real as we can make them. That's the point: this is how real operators train, too.
No space background required
If you can use a keyboard and follow a checklist, you can fly this mission. The briefing pack teaches you everything in under an hour, the first 15 minutes are guided practice, and mission control is on the loop with you the whole time.
Space enthusiasts who want to know what rover ops actually feel like
Students & early-career scientists and engineers curious about mission operations
Gamers and sim fans ready for something real underneath the experience
Anyone who's watched a landing livestream and thought: I want to be on that loop
What you need: a computer (Windows / Linux / modern browser) · stable internet · headset with microphone · ~1 hour for the briefing pack before mission day.
From checkout to touchdown
Register
Secure your seat via MoonDAO checkout ($99 presale)
Get your briefing pack
Operator training by email, plus the crew registration form (callsign, tech setup)
Tech check
Short optional session before mission day so your console just works
Fly the mission
2 hours live, then recording + certificate within 48 hours
Full refund up to 7 days before the mission, or free transfer to the next mission — your choice. If we can't complete your mission for technical reasons, you fly the next one free.
Secure your command seatQuestions, answered
Is this a real rover on the Moon?
No — it's a high-fidelity simulation of a realistic mission profile, built on open-source software. You get the procedures, telemetry, teamwork, and pressure of real operations, without the several-million-dollar price tag of flying hardware.
I have zero space background. Will I be lost?
No. The briefing pack teaches you everything in under an hour, the first 15 minutes of the mission are guided practice, and Flight and Science are on the loop with you the whole time. The mission is designed for first-timers.
What if my rover gets stuck or I break something?
Then you're having the authentic experience. Anomalies are part of the mission — mission control will help you recover, and recovering is the best part.
What hardware do I need?
A regular computer and a headset. No gaming PC required — we run a tech check before the mission to make sure your console works.
When exactly is the mission?
18 July 2026. Registered crew get the confirmed schedule (plus a backup date) the moment it's locked, before any public announcement.
What if I can't make the date?
Full refund up to 7 days before, or transfer your seat to the next mission for free.
What if the simulation crashes?
We rehearse contingencies — this is mission operations, after all. In the unlikely event we can't complete your mission, you fly the next one free.
Why $99?
Six seats, two facilitators, a live two-hour operation, custom science content, and weeks of preparation per mission. The presale price is the lowest it will ever be — and it directly funds open-source lunar software development. MoonDAO citizens pay $90.
Will there be more missions? Drilling rigs? Bases?
Mission 001 is deliberately focused: rover operations, done well. More complex missions are on the roadmap, and Mission 001 crew get first access at alumni pricing.
Is this connected to MoonDAO?
Checkout and billing are handled by MoonDAO, and LunCoSim is developed with the support of the MoonDAO community.
Six seats. One Moon.
Mission 001 flies once. The crew that flies it will be the first — named in the mission log, first in line for everything that comes next.
Secure your command seat — $99 presaleNot ready to commit? Get the mission date, a free mission-briefing sample, and first access to future missions.
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